Gay military drama seeks new streamer following political firestorm
BY VICTOR MELAMED
In a candid interview with Variety last month, executive producer Brent Miller—the longtime producing partner of the late TV legend Norman Lear—opened up about Netflix’s devastating cancelation of the queer military drama Boots.
Miller detailed the creative team’s ambitious vision for a second season and expressed his determination to find a new home for what stands as Lear’s final television project.
While the debut season focused on the psychological and physical rigors of a 1990s Marine Corps boot camp, Miller revealed that Season 2 was designed to broaden the scope significantly.
According to Miller, the plan was to “take the boys to war,” transitioning the characters from the controlled environment of training to active deployment during the early stages of the Gulf War era.
The show was famously labeled “woke garbage” by Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, leading to speculation that Netflix’s decision was influenced by political optics during its pending merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
The storyline would have explored the intense pressure of maintaining a secret identity while facing life-or-death combat situations, further examining the time before the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was implemented.
Boots carries the distinction of being the final series executive produced by Norman Lear before his passing in December 2023. Miller noted that Lear was deeply passionate about the project’s “radical honesty.”
“If Norman were here today, he would be standing in gratitude for the story we were able to tell, but he would also be the first one to say the fight isn’t over,” Miller told Variety.
Miller is currently working with Sony Pictures Television to shop the series to other platforms, hoping to follow the path of Lear’s One Day at a Time reboot, which successfully migrated to Pop TV after being axed by Netflix.
The cancelation remains a point of contention among fans and critics alike. Despite achieving a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score and peaking in the Netflix Top 10, the show was caught in a political firestorm.
The show was famously labeled “woke garbage” by Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, leading to speculation that Netflix’s decision was influenced by political optics during its pending merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Officially, the streamer cited “completion rate” data—the percentage of viewers who watched the series from start to finish—as the primary factor for the non-renewal.
