Channel 4's My Transsexual Summer: How hit TV show helped transform my whole lif

[Shana A]

Channel 4's My Transsexual Summer: How hit TV show helped transform my whole life

Thursday, November 24, 2011
South Wales Evening Post

http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/Channel-4-s-Transsexual-Summer-hit-TV-helped/story-13938095-detail/story.html

IT could have been a recipe for disaster. The idea of putting seven transgender people in a house for a fly-on-the-wall series seemed on the surface to pander to the worst excesses of voyeuristic and sensational reality TV.

But Channel 4's My Transsexual Summer has proved to be a sensitive depiction of the "magic ->-bleeped-<- seven" (as they branded themselves in the first episode) and has raked in viewers and critical praise as a result.

The stories and backgrounds of the contributors are truly diverse. There's Drew, a glamorous blonde with an incredibly supportive family; 52-year-old Karen, who worked as a police officer and a lorry driver before starting to live as a woman, and 22-year-old Lewis, who was born as a female but who knew by the age of six than he had been born into the wrong body.