“Sort of”, on Téva: Muslim and transgender, a nanny from hell – Le Monde

TEVA – SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14 AT 11:05 PM – SERIES

An electric guitar rocks the night. Sabi goes to meet her lover at the restaurant to celebrate his birthday. Disappointed by the avalanche of gifts and attentions, he murders Sabi with a sentence: ” You do not see me. “ This question of the gaze which carries within it that of acceptance is at the heart of Sort of, Canadian comedy with melancholy accents which left a sweet impression on the festival-goers of Séries Mania, who came to Lille to discover the Panorama international selection, in August.

The festival jury has however chosen to reward another series whose main character is a young queer artist. It’s not unfair: done inexpensively, the Colombian Vida de Colores surely needed the trophy more than Sort of, Aired on the Canadian public channel CBC.

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Especially since to evoke the daily life of his transgender hero, nanny by day and waiter by night, Sort of put on his pop clothes. Trendy music, garish costumes and strolls in the bobo neighborhoods of Toronto, the series worn by Bilal Baig is aimed at an audience of millennials. Which does not mean that she will not seduce beyond.

Co-creator and co-writer of Sort of with Fab Filippo, Bilal Baig camps there a young transgender summoned to enter adulthood. It means finding the courage to reveal your queer identity to your parents, who are Muslims of Pakistani descent. It also means quitting her two jobs to maybe try her luck in Berlin with her best friend, a feminist artist with little concessions (Amanda Cordner, brilliant). It is also for Sabi to find love, the real one, after her breakup with Lewis, a straight man lost in the land of sexual fluidity.

These plans on the comet are thwarted by the occurrence of a bicycle accident, which plunges the mother of the children in Sabi’s care into a coma and interrupts her flight. The situation is not made any more comfortable by the hostility of Violet and Henry’s father, embarrassed that this nanny, who at first presented herself as a man, now wears earrings, long hair and colorful skirts. “You are so genuine (…), I’m glad the children were exposed to you ”, he strikes him in the first episode, in a formulation as stupid as violent. “Sabi, you see everyone”, said Bessy, the mother of the children, a little later, as if to tell him that the only person he does not see enough is herself.

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