I saw this episode. It was really, really horrible from beginning to end.
For a start, this show is characterised by lumpen, tedious scripting and wooden performances from all involved. I would not trust the makers of the show to handle a sack of spuds, let alone sensitive issues like gender.
The trans character, Georgina, is played for laughs from the get-go, being introduced by a long, boring monologue from another character about how he needs "male energy" on his team, how he needs someone with b***s, etc, etc. Her trans status is actually irrelevant to the storyline, it's just an afterthought bunged in by a creatively bankrupt scriptwriter who was evidently just bright enough to percive the vacuity of the storyline but not bright enough to address this by adding more depth or humour. Instead, the response was to wheel in a member of a minority group and milk the stereotypes thereof for yucks.
The character is presented as a bad hire--she's been recruited over the heads of the other writers on the team, is getting preferential treatment including being paid 5 times as much money. She's also portrayed as being an incompetent bully, with an overinflated sense of personal entitlement.
The character is portrayed as being harassed by the other office workers. She's continually referred to and addressed by the wrong name and subjected to derogatory comments about her "masculine" features. Comments jokes about her genitalia are tossed around. One of the other characters scribbles "vaginoplasty" on her planner. The other characters do things like place bets on which loo she'll go in; they mangle her pronoun to the point of referring to her as "it." Only one of the regular characters is shown being pleasant and compassionate to Georgina, and is then drawn as being rebuffed by the hostile trans character and joining in with the harassment.
Finally she is forced to leave. We're told that her contract has been mishandled (with this being explicitly described as a result of her "masculine" features), so she can be booted out without consequence. She's seen as completely expendable.
The important thing here is that all the indignity, humiliation and discrimination inflicted on the trans woman is presented as perfectly acceptable, as correct. It's not as if this was a sub-plot, like the Corrie sub-plot, in which the harassment of trans people was being explored. The message wasn't "these are the kinds of things which a transwoman might have to endure in the workplace so let's address that," it was "this is how you SHOULD treat a trans woman in the workplace, she deserves everything she gets and it's really funny."
This is a revolting, inexcusable piece of garbage. The kinds of harassment faced by Georgina are a fact of life for many, many people, as is being unfairly dismissed or engineered out of employment. Seeing these things played for laughs like that--I was literally almost weeping with rage by the end of the show. I'd like to see everyone involved with putting this appalling piece of transphobia on the air dismissed from ITV with the same callous alacrity as Georgina.
