GLR May-June 2025

roots of the genre—audiences may ultimately un-follow Ed and the series altogether. But when Adam gets Ed to look him in the eyes, usually in bed, Ed’s monomania is met not by his boyfriend’s rejection but by romance. Without spoiling both series, Black Doves ends with a sacrificial act, on Sam’s part, to ensure Helen’s safety, while Prime Target will shock you inasmuch as Adam’s closeness to Ed may or may not be a Judas kiss. Perhaps Poe’s generalization is still true: all men conceal a letter, or, in the year 2025, their Internet history.

Under the Covers

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character is represented because it’s ... like a byproduct of who he naturally is and doesn’t need to be discussed.” Perhaps as gay men are increasingly mainstreamed on TV, they need a babe to balance things out. For years, Taylah has been spying on Ed’s professor, who had stolen Ed’s research into prime numbers and has subsequently wound up dead in a carwash. In the series pilot, quite unexpectedly, Ed beds a flirty bartender named Adam (Fra Fee) only to brush him off the morning after. “I’ve got family coming,” to which Adam says: “Lemme guess. They don’t know you’re gay.” “I’m not anything,” he replies, and then asks: “Can you go?” Dining in Baghdad, Taylah finds it equally hard to connect with Ed and tells him that his remoteness is, well, sub-prime. “All of this death and chaos around you and, somehow, you still just focus on the math.” Ed is neurodivergent, apparently on the autism spectrum. As Prime Target unfolds, Ed risks his life (and Taylah’s) to protect Adam, even if Adam and Ed have all the onscreen chemistry of tap water. More cerebral than Black Doves , the leitmotif of Prime Target lies in its mathematical moniker. A prime number is exceptional because it has exactly two positive divisors: one and the number itself. Loners like Ed rarely make for compelling TV; he’s more akin to the number one, which is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do, as the old song goes. After another argument with Taylah over whether life is simply “pure mathematics,” he huffs off, telling her not to follow him. Given the character’s roboticism—a departure from the hotblooded

Leo Woodall in Prime Target .

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