Recently I've been catching up with some television including Russell T Davies latest series Tip-Toe which was really powerful plus What It Feels Like For A Girl. This series came out in 2025 and is an 8 part adaptation of trans woman Paris Lees' 2021 fictionalised memoir of the same name. Lees took events from her life but added the fictional character of Byron as a proxy for her younger self.
I also found this a powerful series. Set in Hucknall in Nottinghamshire in the early 2000s it centres around teenager Byron. They aren't the nicest of characters and when they get into terrible situations they seem to make it worse with their own acid tongue but yet you still sympathise with them due to Ellis Howard's magnetic performance and an understandable background. Byron's dad is a macho type who wants his son to be just like him and mum did a 'Shirley Valentine' which made me think about how that cultural touchstone seems to have faded from memory now (Shirley Valentine is a 1989 film based on a stage play about a woman who leaves her husband in the UK behind to live a new life in Greece).
Byron's journey to realising they are trans is handled in an interesting, almost matter of fact way. There are no huge, defining moments like staring at a dress in a shop window or trying on mum's bra in fact, despite some hints from their past, they don't seem to think about it much until they steal a wig in a scene which is played mainly for laughs. To rewind slightly, Byron falls in love but when their boyfriend suddenly ghosts them they are inspired to go looking for him in Nottingham and instead find a new queer friend group including transwomen Lady Die and Sasha. Once the wig is 'obtained' Sasha offers to do Byron's make-up and from then on they start to dress more femme on a regular basis. The final episode sees Byron out and proud and starting again after a spell in prison and, in one of my favourite moments, following a rift with Die the two make up in the very British way of bonding over taking the mick out of a friend. It did make me quite emotional by the end too and made me wish I was a bit more confident in dressing how I want to.
Here in the UK the series is still available on the BBC iPlayer.
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| Ellis Howard as Byron in a BBC publicity photo for What It Feels Like For A Girl (2025) |
