Tales of the City: 28 Barbary Lane is a very different place in Netflix's revival

Identity, as Poly Styrene once noted, is a crisis. It’s a testament to the warm-hearted beauty of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City that they mixed the Dickensian soapiness of a newspaper serial with an attitude which was quietly revolutionary.

The stories started as a column in the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner before becoming books. When the books were adapted for TV in 1993 (by Channel 4) there was controversy in the US, where the American Family Association accidentally promoted the show by trying to shut down broadcaster PBS for showing a drama in which men were seen kissing.

We’ve come a long way since then, though intolerance isn’t hard to find. Tales itself has updated its sexual politics to match contemporary mores, adding Orange Is The New Black writer Lauren Morelli as showrunner. That means the arguments about identity feel a little more obvious, notably in one of the most incendiary scenes, a dinner party in which the use of the word “tranny” is called out.

How has San Francisco changed? Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis) — the landlady of the show’s island of tolerance, 28 Barbary Lane — has an answer: “We’re still people, aren’t we? Flawed, narcissistic and doin’ our best.”

The drama has to do a bit of housekeeping before the story gets a grip. First, the central character, Mary Ann (Laura Linney), has to return, ostensibly to celebrate Anna’s 90th birthday. She arrives from a straight life in Connecticut with a dull husband, whose days seem numbered when he invites her to “frolic among the freaks”. Mary Ann tries to be “easy-breezy” but gets a frosty reception from Shawna (Ellen Page), who is under the impression that she was abandoned by her birth mother, a story propagated by her father Brian (Paul Gross).

The newer denizens of the Lane have their own stuff going on. Margot (May Hong) is the disappointed lesbian girl friend of Jake (Josiah Victoria Garcia), who is changing pronouns. Michael/Mouse (Michael Bartlett) is trying to get used to the idea of condom-free sex. There is a lot going on. There’s a gender reveal party, an argument about feminism at the Queer Burlesque Co-op, and a riff on intersectionality, privilege, dignity, safe spaces — all the stuff.

Happily, the actors pull it off. Dukakis is a picture of grace under pressure, Linney wears a mask of frigid concern at all times, and Page floats the whole show with her easy charisma. The plot? There’s a creepy guy, and 28 Barbary Lane is under threat.

Tales of the City is available to stream on Netflix now.