Let’s begin with my terrible confession: For decades, I’ve been wrong about The Nanny. (And also about Steve Urkel, but we’ll get to him later.)
Long, long ago, when The Nanny was originally on the air, I considered myself more of a Frasier gay than a Nanny gay; I assumed that Fran Drescher’s show was all crass sex jokes, annoying child actors, and wall-to-wall heterosexuality.
But oh. Oh dear. I was so wrong. Terribly, horribly, homosexually wrong. At the urging of some friends, I’ve been giving the show a second chance, now that it’s available in crystal-clear fidelity via HBO. And not only is it honest-to-goodness very very funny, it is surprisingly queer. And not just because it’s basically The Sound of Music meets Mame on Broadway! It also has a startling approach to gay characters that really caught my eye.
