BIG NAME FAN

The reunion of a cult-hit TV detective series may mean a second chance at romance for the show’s stars, who face a mystery that might bring them together.

Returning to the Craven’s Daughter set five years after the show ended, Bexley Simon can’t help but wonder if the place is a little haunted. Although Bex’s friend Jen Arnot, the show’s makeup artist, tragically died on set, Bex is less worried about actual ghosts than about things that have been left unsaid. For example, just as the romantic tension between Cora Banks, the private eye she played, and Henri Shannon, the former FBI agent played by Samantha Farmer, was never resolved, neither was the relationship between the two actors, for whom the timing was never right. Now back together for a reunion special and an accompanying rewatch podcast, Bex and Sam are revisiting all those will-they, won’t-they moments on air. As happened with the original ambiguously close Xena and Gabrielle, fans are rooting for the two to find their way to each other. Again echoing their predecessors, a large contingent of online fans have launched their ships into fan fiction, perhaps hoping to plant seeds in the head of Bette Holloway, the show’s nepo-baby writer. While Bex and Sam try to sort out who they are and who they can be to each other, a guest on the podcast mentions that the person known only as Big Name Fan, a prolific writer of Craven’s Daughter fanfic, may have been more closely connected to the show than anyone realized. Questions of the Fan’s identity swirl around set, making Bex wonder whether Jen’s fatal plunge from a balcony could have been more than misadventure.

A TV reunion is fertile ground for a queer pop culture makeover.