Cast includes Thea Gill, William Gregory Lee
Directed by Sam Irvin
Released by Out & About Films via Eagle Entertainment
Filmed for the US gay cable network, Here!, Dante's Cove is a softcore soapie soaked with same-sex shagging and supernatural shenanigans.
It’s as if the producers poured Queer As Folk, Buffy and Melrose Place into a Mixmaster to create a dish that is icky, sticky and hardly nutritious, but also surprisingly tasty. As just about anyone who's ever dined on the Cove's eye candy will say, it's a “guilty pleasure”.
Like most soaps, it’s easy to pick up the plot threads, so you won’t need to have seen the first series. Nonetheless, it’s handy to know a bit of the Cove’s magical history.
Back in the 1840s, a witch, Grace, and a warlock, Ambrosius Vallin, were to be wed. But when Grace finds her immortal betrothed in delectico flagrante with his butler, she doesn’t just call off the ceremony, she throws the hissy of all hissies, turns the butler into wobbling lump of flaccid jelly and turns Vallin into an old man. She then secretes him in her basement, where he will stay locked away until kissed, willingly, by another man.
Flash forward 160 years. Grace’s house is now the Hotel Dante. Much like the entire town, the inn is populated almost entirely by young gay muscle studs. There’s also a couple of lesbians (because you couldn’t possibly have a show about witches without lesbians!) and a handful of token heterosexuals.
By the start of series two, the withered warlock is set free and rejuvenated by the kiss of a young, blonde, commitment-phobic muscle stud called Kevin. Yes, Kevin.
Unfortunately for Kev, witches and warlocks are not the most emotionally stable beings in Dante's Cove. They may command the elements. They may kill with a mere stare. They may be immortal. But their mastery of emotional maturity is severely munted. Just one kiss and “Bro” becomes a supernatural stalker convinced he and Kev are “destined” to be together.
Standing in the way of Bro’s perverted plans are Kev’s buffed boyfriend, Toby, and his lesbian friend, Van, an apprentice witch. And complicating matters supernaturally are Bro’s bitter and twisted former fiancée, and the mysterious Diana (Queer As Folk’s Thea Gill), both of whom have their own notions of destiny.
Over the campy course of the five 45-minute episodes there’s magic, intrigue, relationship dramas, death, a sex club, a little drug use, bargain basement special effects and frequent forays into gratuitous nudity and simulated sex (mostly male).
What more could you want?
Cast includes Thea Gill, William Gregory Lee
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