Young, trans and looking for love, BBC3 - TV review: An important but flawed documentary-cum-reality show

The latest instalment of BBC’s Breaking the Mould season had its faults but featured subjects who deserve to be celebrated

Young, Trans and Looking for Love (BBC)

Part of BBC Three’s Breaking the Mould Season, this was framed around YouTube-famous, US-based teenage transgender couple Arin Andrews and Katie Hills. They’ve racked up hits and headlines since 2012 and, as we learnt towards the end of this, have actually split up (don’t worry, they’re still pals and make regular TV appearances together).

But if their names draw more people to watch this, then that’s a good thing. The latest UK statistics show that 48 per cent of young transgender people have attempted suicide so coverage –including flawed coverage –is important.

I hope that this programme’s other subjects, Devon Ellerman and Claire Broyles, will be treated with the same emotional maturity from their peers that they displayed on screen. They talked honestly about growing up transgender: the bullying, the isolation, the effect of medication and implications of surgery were all covered. Braver still, they let cameras document their romantic struggles.

Thank goodness Devon’s mum talked him out of revealing he was born female to his date for the first time up on stage during a poetry slam. Instead, he told her privately, away from the cameras. Happily, he got his second date. Though a documentary, the reality show-style element by Barcroft Media (a company that specialises in showing the ‘amazing side of life’) occasionally veered into making it feel like an episode of Made In Chelsea, just with a lot, lot more at stake - and what a shame not to get any Brits on board. But I’m not sure what I thought about the programme-making really matters. If it can help anyone struggling to come to terms with who they are, then it’s worth watching,