In an era of increasingly frequent—if often imperfect—queer representation in media, it might be difficult for the young target audience of Peacock’s new reboot of the classic Queer as Folk to imagine that a show following a group of gay men in Pittsburgh living relatively average lives could have created a new paradigm for how gay and lesbian stories would be told on television. But a little over 20 years ago, the original incarnations of Queer as Folk did just that—first in the United Kingdom in 1999, and then a year later in the United States.

So often called “ground-breaking” that the description might start to sound trite if it weren’t also true, Queer as Folk put gay people and queer storylines front and center …