Vertical poster for the 2022 Singaporean boys' love web series Getaway

Getaway

CompletedWeb Series🇸🇬

SYNOPSIS

Getaway is a Singaporean BL web series, released in five episodes on the Dear Straight People YouTube channel between 23 May and 20 June 2022. Sean Foo, who founded Dear Straight People, wrote it and plays the lead; Ark Saroj directed. The production was shot in Bangkok with a cast drawn from both Singapore and Thailand, and it is generally described as the first boys' love drama Singapore has produced.

The story opens with a coming out that goes wrong. Sam tells his family and the response shuts a door rather than opening one, so he flies to Bangkok to look for the gay uncle his relatives long ago stopped mentioning. What he finds first is Top, a young man looking for love in the wrong places and in no hurry to stop. Around the pair the series assembles Sam's father, Alex, Dr. Big and Hilmi, a circle that takes in both the family Sam left behind and the one he stumbles into.

Episodes run between roughly nine and seventeen minutes, and their titles read as a sequence in themselves: Coming Out, Yas Queen, Love Wins, Ex-Boyfriends and Love Yourself. Every instalment went up free on YouTube with Chinese, Spanish, Thai, Italian and English subtitles, and the opening episode has since passed six million views. GagaOOLala added the series to its own catalogue on 28 September 2023, more than a year after the YouTube run had finished.

Dear Straight People afterwards posted a crowdfunding appeal for a second season of five roughly twenty-minute episodes, and during 2026 began re-cutting the existing material into short vertical instalments on the same channel. Neither alters what the original five episodes are: a small self-funded production that found an audience out of all proportion to its budget. The series was nominated for Content of the Year at the 2023 Mediacorp Pinwheels awards.

CONTENT DETAILS

Native Title
Getaway
Original Title
Getaway
Adaptation
Credited to an original story by Sean Foo, who wrote the series and plays its lead. No novel, comic or other prior source work has been identified for it.
Genres
Coming-of-AgeDramaFamilyRomanceShort-FormTravelYouth
Themes
BL
Key Themes
Coming OutFamily EstrangementChosen FamilyBangkokCross-Border ProductionQueer SingaporeFirst Boys Love SeriesSelf-AcceptanceShort-Form StreamingDiaspora And ExileFree-To-Watch ReleaseOpenly Queer Casting
Country
Singapore
Language
English
Networks
GagaOOLalaYouTube
Seasons
1
Episodes
5
Duration
9-17 min
Aired Start
Aired End
Release Year
2022

WATCH ON

YouTubeGagaOOLala

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Singapore’s first BL drama: Released in May 2022 and billed by its producers as the country’s inaugural boys’ love web series.
  • Made by a media platform, not a studio: Dear Straight People, the LGBTQ+ outlet founded by Sean Foo, produced it; Foo wrote the scripts and plays the lead.
  • Filmed in Thailand: Shot in Bangkok with Thai cast members including Paween Naliang as Top, under director Ark Saroj, while remaining a Singaporean production.
  • Five short episodes: Titled Coming Out, Yas Queen, Love Wins, Ex-Boyfriends and Love Yourself, running roughly nine to seventeen minutes each between 23 May and 20 June 2022.
  • Free and multilingual from launch: Every episode carries Chinese, Spanish, Thai, Italian and English subtitles on YouTube.
  • A very large opening audience: The first episode has passed six million views, while the fifth stands under four hundred thousand.
  • Picked up later by GagaOOLala: The streaming service added the series on 28 September 2023, over a year after the original run ended.
  • Award nomination: Nominated for Content of the Year at the 2023 Mediacorp Pinwheels awards.

EDITOR’S VERDICT

7.2/10

Reviewed by Renkaze, editor of BL & GL Flix

Getaway carries a label that will outlive the series itself: Singapore's first boys' love drama. That claim is worth stating plainly, because it is the main reason the record exists, and because the work underneath it is more modest than the billing suggests.

What it gets right

The casting is the strongest decision. Dear Straight People built the production around openly queer performers and a gay director, and put a Singaporean lead opposite a Thai one rather than importing a formula wholesale. The opening episode, organised around a coming out that fails, is the most confident stretch of the series: it has something specific to say and a local register in which to say it.

Distribution was handled with more care than the budget implies. Five subtitle tracks from launch, every episode free, and a GagaOOLala pickup sixteen months later gave a self-funded production genuinely international reach. For a first attempt at a form Singapore had not previously tried, getting the thing seen was at least half the job, and that half was done well.

Where it thins out

The viewing figures tell an uncomfortable story about the back half. The first episode has passed six million views; the fifth sits under four hundred thousand. Audiences arrived in enormous numbers for the premise, and most of them did not stay to the end. That gap is the honest measure of the series: the hook was far stronger than the follow-through.

Episode lengths swing from about nine minutes to over seventeen, which reads less as structural design than as material cut to whatever each instalment could carry. The Bangkok stretch also leans on the city's atmosphere to do work the script does not always do itself, and the search for the uncle, which is the engine of the whole premise, gets less room than the romance that interrupts it.

Verdict

A first is not the same as a best, and Getaway is better understood as a threshold than as a finished piece of drama. It is worth the hour for the opening episode, for the cast, and for what it demonstrated was possible from Singapore on almost no money. Viewers arriving from the Thai industry whose setting it borrows should expect something considerably rougher than what they are used to.

Final Score: 7.2/10

What Getaway is about

The premise requires a plane ticket, and that is the most revealing thing about it. Sam's problem is in Singapore, his family is in Singapore, and the series sends him to Bangkok anyway. Nothing in the plot strictly demands the move: a young man estranged from his relatives could be estranged at home. What the journey buys is a setting in which the story can proceed without continually negotiating the terms of where it is being told.

Singapore's screen sector has long worked inside content rules that treat gay life as a matter for careful handling. Bangkok, by 2022, was the production centre of an entire BL industry. Moving the action there let a Singaporean crew make a Singaporean story using a vocabulary already established next door, and it placed the two leads in a city where neither has to account for himself to anyone.

The uncle Sam is looking for makes the same point in the past tense. He is described as exiled, a relative the family stopped speaking about, and he too is somewhere else. The series therefore holds two generations who left: one who had no choice and one who bought a ticket. What separates them is not the leaving. It is that the younger one expects to go back.

Where Getaway was filmed

Bangkok, Thailand

OFFICIAL TRAILER

EPISODE SCHEDULE

5 / 5 episodes aired · Completed
EP 1
23 May 2022
Aired
EP 2
30 May 2022
Aired
EP 3
06 Jun 2022
Aired
EP 4
13 Jun 2022
Aired
EP 5
20 Jun 2022
Aired

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is this really Singapore's first BL series?

That is how its producers and most coverage describe it, and no earlier Singaporean example has been identified for this catalogue. Dear Straight People billed it as the country's inaugural BL web drama on release in May 2022.

Why is it set in Bangkok?

The plot sends its lead there to find an estranged uncle, and the production followed. Filming took place in Thailand with Thai cast members alongside the Singaporean ones, though the production company itself is Singaporean.

How long does the whole series take to watch?

A little over an hour. Five episodes run between roughly nine and seventeen minutes each, released across four weeks from 23 May to 20 June 2022.

Where can it be watched?

Free on the Dear Straight People YouTube channel, with subtitles in five languages, and on GagaOOLala, which added it on 28 September 2023.

Is there a second season?

None has been released. The channel posted a crowdfunding appeal for a five-episode second season of roughly twenty-minute instalments, and separately began re-cutting the existing episodes into short vertical form during 2026.

What language is it in?

English, as recorded by English Wikipedia, despite the Thai setting and the Thai members of the cast.

Is it based on a book?

No. It is credited to an original story by Sean Foo, who also wrote the scripts and plays Sam. No novel or comic source has been identified for it.

Written and verified by Renkaze · Last updated 20 September 2026

This entry holds one poster image and credits gathered from published reporting; view counts and platform availability were accurate when recorded and shift over time. See our disclaimer.

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