Decades before Anderson Cooper became a CNN fixture, openly gay men had to be creative about getting time behind the anchor desk. Sometimes it meant breaking the law. Footage of activist Mark Segal storming the set of “The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite” on Dec. 11, 1973, and the surprising aftermath of his live protest, is just one of the many freeze-frame moments in Apple TV’s “Visible: Out on Television,” a new docuseries that chronicles milestones in gay rights on the small screen.
There are plenty of opportunities in the five-hour project to celebrate just how far we’ve come. But viewers will also have to do a lot of wincing.
Among the most heartbreaking moments: Sheila James talking about how her breakout character, Zelda, on “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” was denied her own spinoff because she was too butch; “American Idol” standout Adam Lambert recalling the backlash he received after planting a kiss on his keyboardist during a performance on “The American Music Awards”; and a disturbing look back at the career of Paul Lynde, the closeted comic whose private torture was anything but funny.
Clips from a 1974 episode of “Police Woman,” in which Pepper hunts down killer lesbians at a nursing home, and a tone-deaf 1967 Mike Wallace documentary, “The Homosexuals,” are excruciating to watch.