The first image presented in Andrew Haigh’s 2011 romantic drama Weekend is a view over Nottingham. The buildings don’t stand as tall as London’s and clusters of brick houses are swaddled by treelined parks. It’s not an instantly identifiable location for audiences outside of Nottingham, nor is it a quintessential image in British cinema, let alone queer film. This represents a rarely acknowledged problem; Haigh’s precious film, which turns 15 in 2026, remains one of a small collection of films that explore the contemporary gay experience away from the capital. There is a consistent tendency to rely on London as the foundation for queer British stories, depriving audiences of seeing beyond a very specific part of the country. When filmmakers do venture outside of London, it turns out there are plenty of stories to tell that all benefit from a specific sense of place.
Haigh’s British mumblecore follows introverted English Midlands lifeguard Russell (Tom Cullen) and flirtatious art student Glen (Chris New) over 48 hours as the erotic excitement of a one-night stand blurs into an emotional connection that transcends their short-lived time together. They meet when Russell stumbles into a gay bar after ditching a friend’s party; Glen is initially impervious to his advances, but the pair end the night tangled in the oceanic blue bedsheets in Russell’s tower-block flat 14 floors above the city.
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Haigh is deliberate with Weekend’s location as well as timeframe. This isn’t an abstract, nondescript setting; Nottingham’s cityscape sits proudly centre frame. Even the film’s cinematic release poster shows both men huddled at Russell’s tower-block window, gazing out at the city below. The writer-director’s naturalistic filmmaking style goes as far as to treat the historic city as a character alongside Russell and Glen. Whether walking through dual-carriageway underpasses, drunkenly stumbling down King’s Walk, or seen from the window of a high rise flat, Weekend is grounded in Nottingham’s identity and the way its central characters move through the space.
As more queer stories are able to break through at the cinema, certain questions arise time and time again (Should straight actors play gay roles? Are we tired of depressing gay storylines?), but it’s rare that the homogeny of setting in British queer cinema is recognised or challenged. Time and time again, queer stories set in the UK are rooted in London; it’s an obvious choice of course, with the capital serving as an emblem of opportunity and freedom. Take popular queer dramas like Matthew Warchus’s Pride and Russell T Davies’s series It’s a Sin; London offers these characters an escape from small town life where they’re finally able to live openly and connect with others. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with displaying the vibrancy of queer life in London, this being the prevalent cinematic narrative risks reducing queer life in the UK to a debate over rural versus urban; a traditional (often repressive) pastoral life versus a liberal city existence.
So often in LGBTQ+ media, small-town life is presented as something you run from, only perpetuating this notion of homophobia attached to the rural. With this, queer characters are burdened with repression because they live in a location detached from the UK’s city; there’s the assumption that gay people are closeted and that a sense of queer community is desolate. But in Haigh’s film, gay bars are bustling; men are cruising; friends bash heads over ethics and politics, and the arts scene is thriving with unique exhibitions (Glen’s audio exhibition concept included). City life is not inhibited by not being London-centric.
