However, compared to the plethora of gay and lesbian voices on TV, trans representation is still relatively hard to come by. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist, though: here are four shows that featured trans people in all their nuance and complexity. 

What It Feels Like for a Girl

BBC Three and iPlayer

Paris Lees’s explosive 2021 book, half fiction and half memoir, recently received the silver screen treatment. Prior to their transition, Byron finds escape in Nottingham’s frenetic noughties club scene, where they fall in with a group known as the Fallen Divas.

The show and the book excel in their honesty. What It Feels Like for a Girl doesn’t shy away from the uglier side of being queer, and how marginalisation can turn people desperate. It’s not long before Byron and co are stealing. Just like Lees in real life, Byron spends time in a young offenders institution for robbery, where they realise it’s time to turn their life around.

Instead of sanitising the experience of being trans, Lees (who also serves as the TV adaptation’s lead writer) gives a warts-and-all account.

Bethany Black as Helen – “Helen”, Banana

E4

In-between Queer as Folk and It’s A Sin, Russell T Davies created another LGBTQIA+ drama. In fact, he created two, 2015’s Cucumber and Banana, which featured the same cast of characters, as well as companion documentary series Tofu. Banana focussed on a different character every episode, one of whom was the first trans person in a UK drama to be played by a trans actor.

Stand-up comedian Bethany Black plays Helen, a woman whose ex (Andrew Knott, Gavin & Stacey) leaks private photos of her. As well as revenge porn, she also has to deal with the fetishisation of trans women by cis men.

However, the episode doesn’t focus on these issues so much as how Helen reacts to them, giving her an important sense of agency. In confronting her ex, we see that she is by turns funny, angry and determined, creating an episode of TV that centres, rather than victimises trans people.

Hunter Schafer as Jules – “F**k Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob”, Euphoria

Sky Atlantic and NOW

Hunter Schafer, one of the many breakout stars in Sam Levinson’s teen drama, has a co-writing credit on a particularly memorable episode.

“F**k Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob” sees Jules (Schafer) explore the experience of being trans with a rare depth and candour.

Jules spends most of the 50-minute runtime in a therapy session, away from any cis person to whom she might need to explain the basics. As such, she can dive headfirst into a more complicated discussion of what gender means to her.

Jules goes on to explain that being trans is not a single, neat identity category. In her case, it permeates her relationships and understanding of womanhood as a whole (in both its construction and often brutal enforcement). The result sheds light not just on being trans, but on how personhood can exist and thrive outside a binary.

BD Wong as Whiterose – Mr. Robot

Available to buy on Prime Video and Apple TV+

Sam Esmail’s hacker thriller pulls off a tricky balancing act in Whiterose, featuring a frank depiction of transphobia without ever veering into shock value.

None of Whiterose’s adversaries have an issue with her being trans. They’re more concerned with her (frequently homicidal) leadership of Chinese hacker group the Dark Army. In not obsessing over Whiterose’s gender identity, the show is free to explore all facets of her character, like the loves and losses that shaped her as a person.

Then, there is Whiterose’s alter ego. In public life, she is male presenting, working as Zhi Zhang, China’s Minister of State Security. The world is not ready for a trans woman to hold high office, the show seems to acknowledge. ‘Boymoding’, where a trans woman presents as male to avoid persecution, is all too familiar to trans and non-binary people. Mr. Robot introduces the concept to a wider audience, subtly.