The show was originally set to premiere last year on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's ABC1 channel before executives shuffled it over to ABC2, a smaller digital channel whose younger and hipper viewers were supposedly a better home for the show. Fans accused the ABC of banishing the series because of its gay content, and though the ABC would quickly deny the claims, even Thomas wasn't entirely convinced.

"They told me it was a compliment. I don't believe them," he told one interviewer. "I don't know if what they were saying was, 'Josh, the show is a bit shit,' or, 'Josh, the show has too much suicide and gay sex in it.' People have suggested to me that is why they did it. I would be shocked if that's why, but I also wouldn't be."

It's a shame. Please Like Me never quite took off in Australia when it debuted in February, but here, the show features one of the fresher narratives to hit TV lineups, as Josh, the character, defies a number of the television conventions created by gay characters before him. Josh's discovery of his sexuality is a major part of the show's plot, but a capital-C Coming Out moment is never forced upon him. Instead, Josh's friends and family respond to his news with matter-of-fact acknowledgments and little fanfare. "Coming out, to me, just seems so '90s, you know?" Josh tells Geoffrey in one episode. "They've seen me in school musicals. Do we really need a discussion?"

That's quite the departure from Glee's Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) and the now-canceled Happy Endings' Max Blum (Adam Pally), two gay characters who've earned plenty of praise (for completely different reasons), but whose big reveals to family make up key plot points.

While Kurt spent much of Glee's first season pining over straight Finn (the late Cory Monteith) -- he even sets up their single parents to get closer to his crush -- Please Like Me doesn't resort to the same cliché. Instead of chasing straight guys, Josh and his best friend Tom (played by real-life pal Thomas Ward) maintain a model bromance complete with anime-watching hangouts and dick jokes that never make Josh the butt of the joke.

Lazy gaybro Max, meanwhile, enjoys similar relationships with Happy Endings' straight guys, but his short-lived dates and flings are often significant chunks of his storylines. Please Like Me flips that script, too, by suggesting they don't need to be, especially for someone like Josh, who's probably better off without a relationship: He's comically terrified of sex, averse to Geoffrey's chiseled figure ("The muscles made me feel horrible...like I was made out of donuts"), and ambivalent toward Geoffrey's emotional intensity and desire to commit. Besides, Josh has other problems -- like helping his parents and friends get their lives together just as he's figuring out his own.