In the era of social distancing, when significant face-to-face and physical spaces—from film festivals to shelters—are not accessible, alternative viewing can act as community building for marginalized communities. Sex Education (Laurie Nunn, 2019–) and Trigonometry (Duncan Macmillan and Effie Woods, 2020–), both primarily queer positive and sex positive and featuring fully realized black, Asian, and mixed-race characters, indicate a new way of telling intimate stories in British television. Suggesting that these shows offer an exuberant poetics of sexual frankness that is as verbal and affective as it is visual and spectacular, So Mayer delineates their conscious invocation of queer and feminist cultural histories. And, at a time of heightened awareness about touch putting people at risk that could not have been a consideration at the time the shows were produced, Sex Education and Trigonometry use an educationally expansive narrative of sexualities in which an aesthetics of tactility is underpinned by new narrative forms shaped by consent and respect, to encourage viewers to welcome an equally expansive commonality.

British and American television shows frequently deploy rape and sexual assault to juice up characters’ backstories or titillate viewers, but they rarely focus on how one assault impacts multiple people’s lives or how intersectional oppression further traumatizes assault survivors. FQ columnist Caetlin Benson-Allott suggests that this may change in the wake of Michaela Coel’s incendiary series I May Destroy You (BBC One and HBO, 2020), which has answered a need for more artistically ambitious television about black life and for feminist-of-color critiques of rape culture on television. Hailing the series for its formal innovations as well as its generic and political interventions, Benson-Allott argues that I May Destroy You elevates its genre, and television more broadly, by contesting their prior shortcomings.

This article examines methodological techniques and considerations during life-story interviews with female friends and acquaintances for research on television production. It reflects upon the nuances at play during such interviews in which the interviewer is positioned simultaneously as a researcher and an ex-television produceror what has long been identified as an “insider” (Caldwell)while simultaneously understanding television work within a framework of a contemporary “turn to care”. Understanding television work in the context of care raises specific considerations: to what extent should the emotional, experiential engagement of being an “insider”, amplified by a discussion of care, be used as part of this work? The discussion of care often focuses subjects on where care is not applied to them, particularly in the lives of freelancers as freelancing denies a structure of care due to its atomised and individualist construction. Meanwhile, conversations about care emphasise the emotional load demanded, which is often revealed as overwhelming. What are the responsibilities of the researcher in opening up subjects in this way; where should the work of the “insider” stop and are the methods balanced by the usefulness of the findings?