For some, the welcoming in of the year 2000 signalled the end of the world. For others though, like Byron in the BBC’s new adaptation of Paris Lees’ 2021 memoir What It Feels Like for a Girl, it was only just the beginning.

We meet acting newcomer Ellis Howard as Byron, a queer 15-year-old trapped in the working class area of Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium. The world is alight with parties; Byron, currently identifying as a boy, is in bed playing Snake on his Nokia. This is the world in which is set: Sugababes’ “Overload” soundtracks scenes, rancid dick pics sent in chatrooms load a pixel at a time.

Yet Byron is woefully out of place. While he applies lip gloss, his brutish father (Michael Socha) laments having a “soft lad” for a child; when, as a kid, Byron says that he’s a girl, his father ferociously berates him. His mother is an absent presence; his nan, while his safest space, is classically ignorant. “One of ‘em always looks like a girl so why don’t they marry a girl?” she wonders while she and Byron watch a gay couple on TV. Vicious bullies leave him bloodied and bruised for being a “fairy” and a “poof”.

It’s a chance encounter in a grotty public toilet that sets Byron on a course that will change his life. While he starts cottaging with much older men for £7.80 – “He offered me a fiver, but I talked him up!” Byron gleefully tells a friend – he then meets Max, a 20-year-old love interest. While Byron is entangled in all the heady feelings of first love, Max becomes his pimp. When Max ghosts him seemingly without reason, Byron heads into the bright city lights to find him.