24-06-2025
A crude, one-note trans comedy from ITV
Jordan Gray is the trans comedian who briefly achieved notoriety a couple of years back on Channel 4's Friday Night Live by stripping naked during a live musical performance to reveal breasts and a penis, then using the latter to play the piano. If you find this daring and hilarious, you might love Transaction (ITV2). For everyone else, it's a crudely one-note sitcom. Again, the penis is playing the note.
Gray is the writer and creator of the show. It's set in a supermarket and the best thing it has going for it is Nick Frost. He plays Simon, the well-meaning but hopeless store manager. Frost is such a comedy talent that he elevates everything he's in, so Transaction gets one star just for casting him. Another goes to the supporting performances, which are nicely done. The problem is the writing.
Here's the set-up: when Simon accidentally angers the pro-trans community with a misguided ad campaign (a visual joke so bad I had to pause my TV and stare at it to work out what was wrong), he decides to hire a trans employee to rescue the firm from PR disaster and reassure the protesters that he runs an inclusive workplace. One of the shelf-stackers on the night shift, Tom (Thomas Gray, no relation), knows just the person: his chronically work-shy and egomaniacal flatmate, Liv, who is a trans woman. Cue fish-out-of-water comedy as Liv is forced to work for a living, rather than lie on the sofa sponging off Tom. Liv behaves like a Grade A cow, bar the occasional sentimental moment.
This is all fine in theory but terrible in practice because the script just isn't up to snuff, despite the cast's best efforts. To cut Gray some slack, this is a first foray into sitcom-writing, one of the most difficult genres to crack. More experienced heads at ITV should have suggested that Liv didn't need to dominate every scene, and that being trans shouldn't be the punchline of every joke.
Some examples. Tom complains that Liv has peed all over the toilet seat. 'Most women sit down to wee,' he says, 'Most women have no comeback to an unsolicited d--k pic. At least I can aggressively reciprocate,' says Liv. Tom objects to the hours that Liv keeps: 'It's not my fault you choose to start your day at 9pm, unless of course you've confused transgender with Transylvanian.' An employee tells Liv: 'I'm sick of you lot shoving your PC-ness down our throats,' to which Liv replies: 'It's pronounced 'penis' but she's got a point.' There is, sure as eggs is eggs, a gag about JK Rowling.
We are supposed to find Liv's diva behaviour amusing. It is an extension of Gray's comedy persona – that infamous Friday Night Alice nudity occurred during a song titled Better Than You. But you can't bludgeon an audience into liking a character.
Liv tries to make mischief in a bid to get sacked, informing Simon that he needs to strip the store of bananas and aubergines: 'As a woman, I noticed a lot of phallic produce on the way into the store. As a transgentrified individual I was born with a penis that I didn't ask for, do you really think a woman like me wants to be reminded of that all bloody night long?' Gray does poke fun at diversity in the workplace. Standing between two employees, one of them black and the other with achondroplasia (Kayla Meikle and Francesca Mills, both very good), Liv says: 'We look like the set-up to a joke that would get you uninvited to Christmas dinner.' Transaction isn't a humourless examination of being trans. It's just not very funny.
