Michael’s white and Ben’s biracial. Michael’s older and Ben’s younger. Michael’s HIV positive and Ben’s negative. Michael’s a survivor of the AIDS era and Ben’s only heard about it. Michael’s stuck in the past and Ben’s looking forward.

At no point are this couple’s differences more apparent in “Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City” than when Michael “Mouse” Tolliver (Murray Bartlett) takes his partner Ben Marshall (Charlie Barnett) to a dinner party, hosted by his more established ex-boyfriend and A-gay friends.

When Ben speaks out against one of the others’ transphobia, he gets piled on by the rest, all of whom survived the AIDS era, fought for gay liberation, and helped make it safer for gay men to walk the streets of San Francisco without being bashed, live longer lives (if they are HIV-positive), and bareback (if they’re on PrEP). His partner, Michael, sits by silently, afraid to get involved.

It’s tensions like these that make the latest “Tales”—inspired by Maupin’s classic novels set in San Francisco and picking up where the original 1993 PBS series “Tales of the City” and subsequent Showtime sequels “More Tales of the City” and “Further Tales of the City” left off—so provocative.

In advance of the 10-episode series’ Netflix premiere on June 7, I spoke to actors Murray Bartlett (“Looking”) and Charlie Barnett (“Chicago Fire”) about their excitement around the “Tales of the City” reboot, which also features Laura Linney, Ellen Page, Paul Gross, and Olympia Dukakis, reexamining their own socio-political biases, and their tension-inducing sex scenes.