If you want to know how much television has changed, here's something for you.

When the gay drama Queer As Folk by Russell T Davies was shown in 1999, the reviews included this: "Viewers all over the country must have been squirming with embarrassment." And this: "This is the first time I've seen explicit homosexual sex on television and my main emotion is intense sadness." Sixteen years later, the first episode of Davies's new gay drama Cucumber (Channel 4, Thursday, 9pm) has been shown without any fuss. That's how much television has changed. That's how much all of us have changed.

But has television changed enough? In The Herald the other day, I suggested the representation of gay people on television still needs to improve but was taken to task by Bryan Kirkwood, executive producer of Hollyoaks.

He made the point that things are much better than they were and that TV used to be a barren place for gay viewers, singling out Queer As Folk as the programme that kick-started a shift in the landscape.

It's a fair argument and Kirkwood is right about Queer As Folk. That programme was shown at the tail end of a more censorious time but, in being direct about gay sex and relationships, it bounded over several taboos.

It was also funny, which is another good way to tackle taboos because people don't notice so much when they're laughing.

Cucumber can't possibly repeat all of that because it's a different show made at a different time watched by people changed by a social revolution that has included gay marriage. Russell T Davies is also older, so, instead of the teenagers and twentysomethings in Queer as Folk, he's concentrating mostly on the middle-aged (although there is also a strand of dramas about younger gay experience called Banana on E4 as well as documentaries about sex called Tofu online).

Episode one started with a very middle-aged dilemma: night-in versus night-out. As people in their 40s and 50s know, the problem with going out when you're older is there's a load of tests to be passed first. Will it be busy? How late will it be? Will we get a taxi? A night-out when you're older is a series of questions; when you're younger, it's a series of exclamation marks and the occasional dot, dot, dot.

Davies homed in on this right away with a poignant moment proving that, like the best TV writers, he doesn't need words to be good. The central character Henry (Vincent Franklin) is standing outside a pub, having a cigarette, and suddenly a crowd of young girls walks past, having a riotous time.

Henry looks at them briefly and you can see it in his eyes: the pining for the times that were. The rest of the episode was more raucous and a little rude but if it was pursuing the energy of Queer As Folk, it failed to catch it. But that's fine: this is a show about being middle-aged (because gay people get old too) and middle-aged people will stay in and watch it. Young people can watch Banana. Or they can go out and have a good time, like we used to.