When trans teenager Byron (Ellis Howard) is banged up for armed robbery, they draw strength from watching charismatic trans woman Nadia Almada win the 2004 series of Big Brother. Paris Lees, who created the riveting What It Feels Like For A Girl from her memoir of the same name, understands that representation can be life-changing. When you see it, you can strive to be it.
Clearly, What It Feels Like for a Girl is timely and important. Life was tough enough for the Byrons of today before the UK’s Supreme Court ruled in April that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex: a retrogressive decision claimed as a victory by TERFs and right-wing bigots. But this BBC Three drama is also a raw and raucous coming-of-age story that captures the pre-cameraphone hedonism of Nottingham’s Y2K club scene. Lees, who has written for NME, named it after a 2001 Madonna single that got some absolutely banging remixes. Along the way, Lees and her co-writers make salient points about social mobility, sex work and generational trauma.
When we meet Byron, they’re a quick-witted 15-year-old presenting as an effeminate schoolboy. With a chaotic and unstable home life. Byron’s gruff father (Michael Socha) and unreliable mother (Laura Haddock) are only capable of offering conditional love. So, Byron looks for validation and a thin veneer of power by taking on sex work with much older male clients. Byron’s prison sentence is awarded, several episodes later, for their part in robbing a dirty old man who hired them just days after they turned 16.
Howard has previously appeared in TV’s Help and Red Rose, but this is surely his star-making role. He doesn’t just convey Byron’s evolving gender identity with tenderness and empathy, but fully captures the complexities of a teenager who is clever, selfish, exasperating, resilient and incredibly good fun. Byron finds their chosen family among the Fallen Divas, a clique of queer and trans rabble-rousers who dish out the word “slag” as both a diss and a compliment. Byron bonds instantly with aspiring dancer Lady Die (Laquarn Lewis) but clashes with Sasha (Hannah Jones), an alpha female who’s got plenty of their own sass.
Like its protagonist, What It Feels Like for a Girl embraces chaos as it pings between hallucinogenic club sequences, unsqueamish sex scenes, tender family drama, bawdy comedy and unsentimental glimpses of prison life. But it keeps you enthralled every step of the way. This series unfolds with enormous warmth for its young characters and an infectious nostalgia for a now slightly quaint era of Kappa tracksuits and UK garage bangers. It’s also really funny: when the Fallen Divas go wig shopping, they tell the sales clerks they’re in an S Club tribute act.
It all adds up to bold, brilliant TV with killer parting shots: no one should be written off by the system, and it’s never too late to drag yourself out of a hole. We’re all born kicking and screaming, but What It Feels Like for a Girl reminds us that life can be joyful and exciting even as we fight to survive.
‘What It Feels Like For A Girl’ is out now on BBC iPlayer