ACTF News

The ground-breaking live-action children’s series First Day is now available to audiences across the UK on its own dedicated YouTube channel.

First Day Series 1 follows Hannah, a transgender teenager navigating her first year of high school, and is the first Australian series to feature a transgender lead, Evie McDonald.

The series has received international acclaim, including an International Children’s Emmy Award, a Rose d’Or and a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Kids & Family Programming. It has aired in more than 20 countries across the world, including the US, Canada, Japan and South Africa. It originally aired in the UK on the BBC.

The creators of the series have launched the First Day YouTube channel to ensure young trans people are represented on screen in the United Kingdom.

Producer Kirsty Stark from Epic Films said: “Our goal in creating First Day was to enable transgender children to see themselves on screen, and to provide a positive representation of allyship and support from friends, family and the wider community. There is so much misinformation out there around what it means to be trans and sadly, a lot of this misinformation has gained traction due to a lack of essential stories being widely available to counter these narratives.”

Writer/Director Julie Kalceff said: “In creating the series we worked very closely with trans creatives and the wider transgender community. Central to this was the involvement of lead actor, Evie Macdonald. We wanted the series to accurately reflect the experiences of transgender children but we also wanted to tell a universal story about hope, friendship, and overcoming adversity, a story that transgender and cisgender audiences all around the world could relate to.”

First Day Series 1 is available to watch from Friday 4 July in the UK here.