I’m doing this Blogging A to Z thing for the month of April 2026. I did this 10 years ago, and it was pretty random. For this month at least, I’m focusing on queer media – movies, books, TV, etc., by, for, or about queer people.
WordPress’ AI actually did a pretty good job on the image this time.
Imagine if Brokeback Mountain was set in Yorkshire England and was a better movie.
In God’s Own Country (2017), Josh O’Connor plays Johnny Saxby, a Yorkshire sheep farmer struggling to keep his family farm afloat. His father Martin has suffered a stroke, leaving Johnny to do all the work. What little spare time Johnny has, he spends drinking in the pub and hooking up with random men.
Johnny’s grandmother, Deirdre, lives with them, taking care of Martin and the house. The family communicates mostly through snide remarks and yelling, and it seems like they’re all just hanging on by a thread.
Martin hires Gheorghe (Alec Secăreanu), a Romanian migrant worker, to help out for a week during lambing season. Johnny’s kind of a jerk to him, but somehow Gheorge sees that Johnny’s not actually a bad guy, he’s just overwhelmed and lonely.
Gheorghe shows Johnny some things he’s been missing in his life – mostly kindness and affection, but also how to be a better farmer. Their relationship becomes romantic, but has an expiration date – Gheorghe’s only there for a week.
When Martin suffers a second stroke, Gheorghe offers to stick around a little longer and Johnny takes him up on it, both because he needs the help and he’s falling hard. Faced with the realization that Martin’s never going to recover, Johnny asks Gheorghe to stay on permanently. Gheorghe agrees only if they can be open about their relationship and they start running the farm better.
But then Johnny does something stupid and Gheorghe leaves without saying goodbye. When Martin comes home from the hospital, Johnny realizes he’s really in over his head, and that he misses Gheorghe. He tells Martin he’ll stay on and run the farm, but only if he can get Gheorghe to come back and they run things their way. Martin agrees (not that he really had much choice), and for the first time, he asks if this will make Johnny happy.
This is one of my all-time favorite movies, and my absolute favorite gay-themed movie. This is a simple, beautiful love story, with compelling characters that actually change through conflict, and has a happy ending. The two leads are terrific and the directing is stellar. This is what I want from a romantic movie.
If you read my earlier post on Brokeback Mountain, you know I’m not a fan. One of the things that bother me about that movie is that its the cultural touchstone for any remotely rural gay romance. Multiple reviews of this film called it a Yorkshire Brokeback Mountain. But it’s so much better than that.
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