Women in Cucumber and Banana

Cucumber and Banana

Cucumber, Banana and Tofu are a set of new shows on the Channel 4 network, written by Russell T Davies. Cucumber is broadcast on Channel 4 and contains the main characters and plot. Banana is the second show, broadcast on E4 straight after Cucumber and Tofu is the spin-off web documentary, exclusively on 4oD. E4 has an audience demographic of 16-34 years old so it is the perfect channel to broadcast a show about homosexual relationships.

Banana and Tofu are directed more at the audiences who wish to look deeper into the lives of the characters and find out more about their love interests and personal issues, whereas Cucumber just looks on the surface at them and focuses on the same characters throughout the series enabling the audience to build a complete relationship with them.

In this post I will be looking into the characters of Cucumber and Banana as they are the two that are shown on television.

Cucumber

Cucumber primarily explores the romantic relationship between two middle aged men, how one of them does not want to marry the other and his years long refusal to have sex with him which causes tension between them. This refusal could be seen by audiences to be a way for Henry to deny his sexuality to himself. Unfortunately, this is the reality that we expect of most gay people when they first 'come out', but not when they are middle aged men in a long term relationship. This representation of Henry is fairly negative as it portrays him as being 'scared' of who he is, as he also turns down his partner, Lance, when he asks to marry him, becoming quite offended by the idea.
Davies uses this show to focus on Henrys life and the lives of middle gay men and does not sway from this to represent other characters.

This is why he created 'Banana', to enable him to focus on other LGBT characters and relationships, for example, lesbians, young men, trans, older women etc.

Banana

Banana is a more youth-orientated series, focusing on a different character each week. It follows the lives of lots of different characters and their standalone stories. However, all of these characters know each other, and even Henry is involved, creating an obvious link to 'Cucumber'.
The stories of these characters don't necessarily focus on their sexuality as the main plot of the story, it simply informs who they are, but is only a very minor part of the plot.
This is a list of the female characters in Banana, and the problems that they experience.
Scotty: She has a shy, quiet personality and holds down four jobs, whilst also looking after her sick mother.
Sian and Violet: They are in a fairly new relationship and throughout the series they discover the joys and pitfalls of getting together.
Helen: Helen find herself dealing with an ex that won't leave her alone. When he starts to become obsessive and wants to take revenge, she needs to use all resources available to her.
Amy: She is her own worst enemy and spends all of her time thinking the worst, at the same time as trying to start a successful relationship.
Vanessa: The oldest of all of the characters, and also the toughest and wisest. She finds herself with the fate of a young Nigerian girl in her hands.
Zara: The young Nigerian girl in Vanessa's care. She does not speak any English  but she has a secret to share.


From these descriptions of the characters, we can see that the sexuality of all of these female characters is not important to their stories.