Haven't watched Queer as folk. Sounds like an interesting show; from the description it looks like it's taking a deeper look at the stereotypes themselves. Imagine if instead of the show studying the intricacies of the characters and the pressures they had to deal with, it was just a straight take on gays as stereotypes. Would the show have the same impact?
I may have come a bit too strong with my comments earlier. There's a natural tendency to overstate the negative impressions when the responses are otherwise overwhelmingly positive. I did not mean to say the characters are completely alien. The interactions between the characters, and how they play the game, are very good and believable. I tried to make that clear but I may not have stressed it enough. The 'show about gamers' part is very good.
My problem is with the characters' interactions with 'normal' people. We've seen so far the girlfriend and the sister. They were both ridiculously rude, in a way that's very over the top. More the girlfriend than the sister, admittedly. And the gamers all just sat there and took it, like they could think of no way to deal with them.
If someone rebuked your attempts at being friendly and insulted your friends, would you let them steal your snacks and call you fat, then walk out the door like nothing had happened? What if they did it to a friend of yours in front of you? Even if for some unfathomable reason you did, would you just sit quietly afterwards?
That's the part that bothers me. Yes, we all have interruptions from people who don't understand the game. Yes, some people may think it's childish, and say so. But the playing field is never so skewed that a single person being rude can walk all over five others, and no one thinks to say anything. Girlfriends at the game, who aren't interested or even curious, are tolerated. Not feared.
Granted, I'm not from the UK or US, I don't exactly know what the scene is like there. But I'd be very surprised if it was anything like that.