“Coming out, to me, just seems so nineties,” Josh complains, and he wistfully tells his best friend, who is straight, “I just really think I’m going to miss vaginas. At first, “Please Like Me” might give viewers déjà vu, with its focus on twentysomething friends being awkward about sex, but it quickly establishes its own tender, finicky quality, mingling stories about Josh’s gay awakening with ones about his mother’s depression.
Boyish and wry, a member of that reserved breed of gay men who rarely appear on TV but are everywhere in the offices where I’ve worked, Thomas resembles Mike White, or maybe “Brideshead Revisited” ’s Sebastian Flyte during a Woody Allen phase. The one show that I have seen in full-it is streaming on iTunes-is “Please Like Me,” which is fuelled, quite effectively, by the diffident charisma of Josh Thomas, who wrote the show and stars as a resident of Melbourne named Josh. The embryonic Pivot Web site has a form that lets viewers petition their cable provider for the channel, and some shows are available online, for cord-cutters. Pivot will air documentaries on youth-oriented topics, along with a nightly live interactive news show called “TakePart Live.” I haven’t been able to TakePart yet, because Pivot isn’t on Time-Warner Cable in New York the network’s ratings aren’t even being measured by Nielsen. There are also reruns from a smart set of syndicated series: the science-fiction show “Farscape,” the beloved marriage-and-football drama “Friday Night Lights,” and the long-running Canadian sitcom “Little Mosque on the Prairie” (here retitled “Little Mosque”), which is set in a Muslim community in Saskatchewan. (On the Web site, Gordon-Levitt has been posting daily videos in which he solicits material from viewers, including audio tracks and designs for animated characters.) Next year, there will be a scripted drama called “WILL.” It’s the story of Shakespeare as a Millennial, which is either the best idea on earth or the worst either way, the concept has a brassy, shoot-the-moon quality and, presumably, a refreshing lack of criminal anti-heroes.
In addition, Pivot has “Jersey Strong,” a gritty reality series set in Newark, and plans to launch a crowd-sourced variety show called “hitRECord on TV,” hosted by the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The highlight is the sweetly melancholic half-hour comedy “Please Like Me,” a small charmer that is a bit like “Louie” or “Girls”-that is, if Louis CK were Australian or Lena Dunham gay. As long as you avert your eyes from the talk show hosted by Meghan McCain, Pivot suggests legitimate creative possibilities. Launched by the producer Evan Shapiro, whose résumé includes executive roles at Sundance and IFC, two of the more innovative small cable networks, the network has a sly slogan: “It’s Your Turn.” And so far, at least, you’d never recognize that mythical Millennial in Pivot’s schedule, which has an appealingly humble aura-it’s diverse, it’s global, it’s progressive, with a touch of early MTV (right down to its première broadcast, a montage of bands covering “Video Killed the Radio Star”). This unfortunate demographic, which has become an easy target for anti-technology pundits, a peg for prurient essays on hookup culture, and a marvellous resource for op-ed columnists in a rush, is now in possession of its very own cable channel: Pivot, which débuted, very quietly, last month.
Pivot is diverse and global, with a touch of early MTV.