Sure, dark and ominous prestige drama is wonderful and all, but when it comes to the pleasures of the small screen, it’s hard to beat a great hangout show.
asserted
it → come → show
The genre is dominated by the usual configurations: a group of straight guys and gals (great for will-they-won’t-they tension!), a group of straight dudes (bros being bros!), or a group of straight gals (girl power!).
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bros → dominate → gals
Once every, oh, 37 seasons, a group of gay dudes are allowed to get through (R.I.P. “Looking”), but there is one hangout show that has been the most elusive, even in 2026: the gay girl group.
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that → allow → 2026
We were blessed with “The L Word” all the way back in 2004, sparking hope that it heralded an exciting new era of lesbian shows.
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it → bless → shows
Well, it didn’t.
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it → do → ?
We have gotten a smattering of lesbi-entertainment over the last two decades (including “Generation Q,” a fun and much more inclusive reboot of “The L Word”), but sapphic hangout shows remained a rarity.
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shows → get → Word
The 2021 web series “Slo Pitch” has landed in the majors, scoring a 10-episode streaming season and an executive producer in Elliot Page.
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series → land → Page
The two-episode premiere is streaming on Crave, with two new episodes dropping every Friday.
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episodes → stream → Crave
Here’s the pitch
The comedy follows the misadventures of the Brovaries, a LGBTQ+ beer-league softball team led by the endearingly awkward Joanne (Jess Salgueiro), who must contend with a skills-challenged roster and playing against Leanne (Emily Hampshire), the musical-theatre-obsessed ex that just dumped her.
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that → ’ → her
“It’s a hangout show in a way that I haven’t seen in a while,” Hampshire told the Star before a photo shoot with Salgueiro at Mott 32 in Toronto.
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Hampshire → ’ → Toronto
“I used to watch these shows that are evergreen and you just want to hang out with these people because they’re fun misfits; there’s no big twist that’s going to happen.
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that → use → people
And it’s one helluva winning hangout show.
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it → ’ → ?
These are fun folks whom you’d actually want to just chill with, played mostly by actually-queer performers, whether it’s the laconic ex-pro stud Mel (Amanda Cordner), the meek trans teen Lee (Lane Webber), or the buck-wild German Boris (series co-creator Karen Knox).
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it → want → performers
The antics are low-stakes, old-school sitcom problems (can they raise enough money for their league fees with a sexy car wash?), but the show still manages to feel lived-in, to feel real.
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show → raise → wash
(The extremely legit gay costuming and styling really helps with this, including the preponderance of jorts.)
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costuming → help → jorts
This is what drew executive producer Page to the project, he told the Star via Zoom from New York.
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he → draw → York
The scripts actually made him laugh.
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him → make → ?
“I was loving this ensemble full of very unique, distinct characters with their own comedic tone, and I loved, of course, how queer it was,” he said.
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he → love → course
“It had this representation, with a bunch of characters who weren’t having to explain themselves or defend themselves: they were just existing as their complicated, messy (selves), irritating each other, but at the end of the day, having so much love for one another.”
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they → have → one
So why has it taken so long for these types of queer hangout shows to get airtime?
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types → take → airtime
Salgueiro chalks it up to men feeling as though they can’t sexualize queer women in the same way as straight women, or that queer women won’t sexualize these men in the same way.
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women → chalk → way
“I always noticed this thing in casting where a lot of times they amalgamate the queer female character with ‘she’s tough,’ and she can often be the diverse one,” Salgueiro said.
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Salgueiro → notice → character
“They’re combining all the marginalized groups together.
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They → combine → groups
They’re like, ‘Well, she stands up to the men, so she’s less sexually interesting to us because she’s putting us in our place.’
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she → ’re → place
She’s not the ingenue.
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She → ’ → ?
Sometimes I’m like, ‘Jesus, can we expand on this one particular archetype of what a queer woman is?’”
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woman → ’m → archetype
Hampshire remembers not feeling she had to hide her pansexuality earlier in her career, but only because “I felt I was always needing to be in the male gaze and therefore making out with another girl was hot to them,” she said.
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she → remember → them
“The idea of being a queer character who’s not making out for them is a very different concept.”
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who → make → them
While there was some forward momentum in queer TV with “Schitt’s Creek” — in which Hampshire co-starred as Stevie, the front desk clerk — she says, the landscape had become more barren due to the political climate ... until “Heated Rivalry” improved it some.
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Rivalry → be → it
“So hopefully (queer representation) can just be normal,” she said.
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she → say → ?
When asked where all the good queer hangout shows are, Page joked, “How much time do you have?”
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you → ask → time
It is, he said, a symptom of the greater problem of who’s in control of what TV gets made, but he’s been fighting to improve the ratios with his own productions.
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he → say → productions
“Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia with very little representation,” he said, “any little things that crossed my path that I managed to get my hands on meant the world to me, and had a big impact on my life.”
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I → grow → life
The GTA as a character
The show feels reassuringly like home, like Toronto.
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show → feel → Toronto
“We weren’t pretending it was New York.
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it → pretend → ?
We weren’t pretending it was something else,” Hampshire said.
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Hampshire → pretend → ?
“I think it’s been proven now that the hit shows that come out of our country are always so specifically ours and that is a lesson.”
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that → think → country
The lesson being, the more specific something is, the more universal it becomes.
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it → become → ?
And not only is it set in the GTA (complete with a reference to gay couples’ weekends in Niagara-on-the-Lake, fighting at the ice winery), but the cast actually reads like a group of real queer Torontonians, a refreshing mix of BIPOC folks, trans and non-binary people, and many different vibes of queer women (there’s even a straight girl in the mix).
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cast → set → mix
“The crew that we’re with in ‘Slo Pitch,’ it just looks like the people we hang out with in Toronto,” Salgueiro said.
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Salgueiro → ’re → Toronto
…and 4 more, not listed.
The Aporia
