Transparent was a groundbreaking TV series for more than one reason when it debuted in 2014. The show, starring Jeffrey Tambor as Maura Pfefferman, was both the first prestige TV show to feature a transgender character as a protagonist, and also the first show on Amazon’s streaming service to break through.
The first season won a Golden Globe for best drama series, with Tambor winning both the Emmy and Golden Globe for Best Actor.
The show aired four seasons between 2014 and 2017. But the revolution in trans rights, ironically, passed it by, as it soon became untenable for a series about a trans character to star a cisgender actor in the role. This was before Tambor was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, including one with whom he worked with on the show. Tambor departed the show in late 2017.
The show, which had been renewed during the fourth season, has been largely in limbo for two years, with creator Jill Soloway making noise about wrapping the series up with a musical TV movie, which was officially announced last fall.
Now, we have our first look at the movie, titled Musicale Finale, which will arrive this fall. Soloway is the writer and director:
The trailer makes clear a few things: Maura has died, of unknown causes, and the final movie is about her children Ali, Josh, and Sarah (Gaby Hoffmann, Jay Duplass and Amy Landecker) and Maura’s former wife Shelly (Judith Light) grieving, largely through song. Included is a tune called “Your Boundary Is My Trigger,” which is sung by Shelly.
“When the time came to bring theTransparent journey to a close, it was clear that saying goodbye to Maura was our path forward,” Soloway said in an interview earlier this year. “In this musical finale, we dramatize the death of Maura in an odyssey of comedy and melancholy told through the joyful prism of melody and dance.”
Soloway, over the course of the series, came out as gender-nonbinary, and now uses the singular pronoun “they,” as does the Ali character, played by Hoffmann. Soloway’s sister, Faith, wrote the songs for the wrap-up movie along with Shakina Nayfack.
“It will hopefully feel like Jesus Christ Superstar mixed with La La Land mixed with Flight of the Conchords with something more Jewish thrown in,” Soloway told The New York Times last fall. “A little Yentl.”
The Transparent finale does not have a release date yet, but will arrive in the fall.
