So, I don't normally do this but there's this drama that's recently came out that I'm really obsessed about right now called 'What it feels like for a girl' and honestly this drama has changed my life in so many ways but to my shock nobody is talking about this almost anywhere and I really feel the need to get this out there and help get it some notoriety because it's shocking me beyond belief that a show this good could just release to absolute zero fanfare and just be swept under the rug like this.
I really need to talk about this.
These are my raw thoughts so it might be a little all over the place but I just want to get this out there and share a little bit of my own experiences with this.
So, for clarification I had never heard of Paris Lees before all of this.
I had given up on British television a long time ago and had long resided to getting all of my entertainment through the internet and saw no reason to ever look back. I can't stand modern day TV and can't stand the constant PC agenda being pushed in my face 24/7. I just had enough of the constant cringe, and when I got my first DVD player back in 2003 I never looked back.
I say this because, I discovered this show purely by accident. Just purely by being in the right place at the right time.
I always stay behind late at work as I'm always the last one out. It's usually just me and a couple of night shift workers by the time my shifts over, but as the toilets on our level were out of order, I had to pass through the commons areas to use the main washrooms and that's basically how I stumbled upon this show.
Usually the TV's are all off at this time of night but just by chance they weren't when I was walking through the common area and this drama just happened to be playing that caught my eye.
For whatever reason I couldn't tear my eyes off of it and just stood in the hallway watching it for 5-10 minutes before realising how awkward I looked.
I was curious. I wanted to look this show up when I got home to see what it was all about.
I thought it would take forever to find but to my sheer luck it was literally the first result that came up.
What it feels like for a girl.
I was interested, it was new, it caught my attention.
Was a little upset that the only way to watch it was through BBC iPlayer and ONLY in low quality but I bit the bullet and downloaded all the episodes, slowly watching them one at a time.
I could not BELIEVE how quickly I fell in love with this drama. Almost instantly I was hooked.
From what I can tell almost all the actors are either new or next to unknown but every single person here was giving a phenomenal performance. No one was half baking anything. Ellis Howard as Byron stole the entire show easily but every single actor was perfectly cast and giving it their all.
I could not believe how quickly I fell in love with this and could identify with Byron's story almost 1 to 1.
By the final episode I was close to tears and rooting for Byron/Paris all the way to Brighton.
It was the perfect ending to a perfect 10/10 biopic.
I wanted to know more. I wanted to look up Paris Lees real story, her book and gauge other peoples view on all of this, but to my shock, almost next to no one has ever even seen this drama, heard of it or even wants to give it a chance.
It's... almost as if this was deliberately engineered to fail. It... almost feels calculated to fail on purpose and I have no idea why.
I needed to know more.
Hardly anyone online is talking about this. People in the trans reddit forum barely seemed interested, it has next to no notoriety outside of that.
A positive review from The Guardian and The Independent but a string of negative comments below criticizing the show without watching it.
A ton of homophobia on mumsnet of all places cursing the show left right and centre with not a single person even watching it but criticising it's mere existence.
About two or three YouTube videos from the actors talking about the show and one single 30 second trailer that was a blip on the radar and then gone.
Even the BBC itself seemed quick to want to sweep it under the rug and let it be out there and done with.
What was going on?
Is the author this hated?
I had to get to the bottom of this. I wanted to show support and buy her book that the original show was based on.
Amazon has it in Kindle, Paperback and Audible but I really wanted to physically own a piece of this.
The books were out of stock for 1-2 months so I thought the hell with this and went to Waterstones in Birmingham (As I was there for the day anyway) to hunt this book down.
I don't normally visit Waterstones but was flabbergasted by how hard this book was to find.
I was wandering through the biography section for ages. Nothing was in order, nothing A-Z, it was a mess.
No sign of the book anywhere and the store reeked of p**s and bodily waste for some... odd reason??
Was there for half an hour, was determined not to leave without finding it and too stubborn to ask for help. [I'm one of those guys that just never asks for help in a retail store, I'm too stubborn, too proud.]
But to my frustration, I could not find it anywhere.
The only thing that kept catching my eye was a book about a transgender child ballerina, or something?
That book kept catching my eye as there was nothing else even close to what I was looking for. No LGBT section, no A-Z organisation, nothing.
I thought to myself... it surely can't be hiding behind this book, surely not.
I pulled the book away and sure enough, there it was.
4 copies of What It Feels Like For A Girl hidden behind this one book that had nothing to do with it, in the corner of the second floor of Waterstones, next to a carpet that reeked hard of BO and someone's urine.
I couldn't believe it.
It's almost like this poor thing is destined to fail.
I had never heard of Paris Lees before any of this and would have gone my entire life not knowing who she was or her incredibly journey had I not been in the right place at the right time, all because the bathrooms on my floor were out of order and someone left the TV in the common rooms on.
It's unbelievable to me.
It makes me wonder if there are more shows like this that come and go without anybody ever knowing or speaking about them.
It reminds me of this other drama I used to love from decades back called Sugar Rush.
This show was such a hidden gem. I loved every minute of it. But again, came and went like a wet fart and nobody in the world had ever heard of it. It was even the show that helped start Andrew Garfield's career as he starred as the shy awkward boy next door in this, back when he was an unknown actor.
No ones ever heard of it. It's such a shame.
And I fear this is destined for the same fate and that kills me, man.
This deserves so much better.
Paris' story speaks to me on so many levels because her childhood almost mirrors mine toe to toe.
Her relationship with her father, her mother, her nan, school bullies, wanting to desperately escape the small town she's stuck in and be anywhere else by any means but stuck in a system destined to keep her down in the dumps.
I mean she's even the same age as me so there's not even a single difference in culture, region or time period.
It's uncanny.
This show deserves so much more than it has.
It's not a story that needs a sequel or a second season. No, it wrapped everything up perfectly in 8 episodes.
It just needs more love. It needs a fair chance.
Honestly, give this a go. The topics it covers are risqué but I can't sing it's praises enough.
This is the first time in almost a decade I found a new show I love. I don't want this to disappear into a black void like it all meant for nothing.
Gay, Straight, Trans or not, this honestly is worth a fair chance.
I'm seriously hoping for a DVD/Blu-Ray release, at the very absolute least.
It deserves THAT much.
