“Butterfly,” a British production premiering Friday on Hulu, is a thought-provoking, emotionally realistic issue drama on the subject of gender identity in young people — well, really, just one particular young person, 12-year-old Max Duffy (Callum Booth-Ford) from Manchester, who would like to be known as Maxine.

When the story starts, we are in the middle of things; Maxine's feelings are not new; she's been wanting to wear girls' clothes since age 5, though it’s all coming to a head as puberty approaches, along with a change in schools. The parents, Vicky (Anna Friel, deep and mighty) and Stephen (Emmett J Scanlan), have been separated for a while, a result of Stephen's inability to come to terms with Maxine’s growing horror at her male parts and more explicitly formed wish to be female, and the couple’s difficulty finding common ground over it.

Rated: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)

Read the entire review here:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-butterfly-hulu-review-20190116-story.html