Lip Service is groundbreaking – whatever its star saysBBC3's new drama, Lip Service, at last shows that lesbians can be just as cool, sexy, funny – and normal – as straight women

After watching the first episode of the hot new lesbian drama Lip Service last night, I think the star of the show, Ruta Gedmintas, has underestimated what a programme like this means for gay and bisexual women.

The actor, who plays bad girl Frankie, said in Saturday's Guardian that the programme is not groundbreaking.

Queer As Folk had a groundbreaking status because there hadn't been a show like that before. But we're not trying to do anything that hasn't been done before. We're just making a relationship drama," said Gedmintas.

But the fact that it's "just a relationship drama" is exactly the point – our lives being normalised and turned into one of these twenty/thirtysomething dramas is hugely significant.

Lesbians make up a significant proportion of the female population but it is still pretty rare to see ourselves as regular characters onscreen.

Tipping the Velvet was lovely as a historical fantasy, and the wonderful Sugar Rush or Corrie's coming-out storyline are important, too, but this is a whole series dedicated to the day-to-day lives of grownup lesbians in the UK. And, judging by the first episode, it's as good as the straight versions of itself, such as This Life, which is the series it's drawing comparisons with.

I know that a lot of gay women will say this is gay life with a gloss on it, that the women are too glam. But that's TV and you probably wouldn't see many Mileses or Annas down your local Wetherspoon either.

In truth, there are plenty of Lip Service-esque girls on the gay scene if you hang out in the right places. And I, for one, am pleased that this is the side of our scene that the British viewing public is now seeing.

For too long, lesbians have been perceived as unfashionable, miserable and ugly. Those types do exist, of course, just as they do in the straight world, but they should no more define us than they do straight girls.

If I were to make one criticism based on the first episode, it's that perhaps the most frequently seen type of woman on the gay scene, the sexy butch – think Rhona Cameron – is not represented at all. I know Lip Service's lady-loving writer Harriet Braun has said she wasn't trying to represent all lesbians, but modern butches like this are very popular in the lesbian world and if we don't see any in the first series it will show a lack of guts. It will also annoy lots of gay girls.

In the meantime, it's important to recognise Lip Service for the great service it's doing to British lesbians. As brilliant as Queer As Folk was, it was about gay men, who in recent history have had more representation in the media. The latest study of BBC programming showed that lesbians were given only two minutes of airtime in a random selection of 39 hours of programming.

So, well done to the BBC for giving us Lip Service, we've waited long enough. And here's to a new era of appreciating that lesbians are normal and, yes, can be very cool, sexy and funny, too.