Forever Home:Lost Boys And Fairies.

"Don't ever apologise for showing a child what real love looks like" - Claire

Fancy a good bawl? A really enjoyable and cathartic weep? If so, then Lost Boys And Fairies (BBC1/iPlayer, created by Daf James and written by James Kent) may be the programme for you. I started to feel the tears welling up within the first ten minutes and the waterworks were turned on fully not long after the half hour mark - and not for the last time. Hell, even a cover version of Erasure's A Little Respect nearly got me started.

Gabriel (Sion Daniel Young) and Andy (Fra Fee) are a gay couple living together in Cardiff. They've been together for eight years and, with the help of their social worker - Jackie (Elizabeth Berrington), they're looking to adopt. Andy is super keen but Gabriel, for good reason, is more hesitant. Ideally, they're looking for a little girl but when seven year old Jake (Leo Harris) comes into their life their plans are dramatically altered.

Andy works as an accountant. He's steady, supportive, and kind. People call him a saint. It'll take a while before we discover his back story. Gabriel, however, is a different story. A drag queen who is devoted to the memory of his "loving, nurturing" mum (Gwawr Loader) yet has a more difficult relationship with his father Emrys (William Thomas/Tomos Eames as a younger man). 

Emrys is religious and traditional as well as being very big on the Welsh language and speaking Welsh. Everything Gabriel is not. Gabriel is unorthodox, irreligious, and doesn't like speaking Welsh unless he absolutely has to. He also has quite a chequered history. Flashbacks show him boozing, taking drugs, and getting involved in chemsex parties.

Not necessarily the kind of behaviours that adoption panels look kindly on. Jake, for his part, is utterly adorable. He's hilarious, he's excited to meet his first "gays" though complains, on overhearing them kissing, that they sound like someone "slurping a giant ice lolly". He also enjoys singing Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go To My Lovely? on the school run.

He also has a troubled history. His violent father used to beat his mum up and he's been rejected for adoption before and knows it. Having had close friends go through the adoption process I know, or at least have a rough idea, of just how difficult it is and also how adoption doesn't stop being hard work once it's been approved.

But Lost Boys And Fairies didn't just show how difficult the process is for the adopters but also, even more so, for the children themselves. The programme brilliantly demonstrates how these kids, the ones up for adoption, are just happy, normal kids who have been dealt a bad hand. They love their cuddly toys, they love their superhero comics, they love their Disney films, they love playing dress up, and they love dinosaurs. Dinosaur poo especially.

We see how upsetting it is that these kids have been failed once and may be rejected again and again before finding a safe and happy home, before finding a 'forever home'. We see how the pasts of children, and the pasts of adults, can come back to haunt them at any time (not least when thrown an unpleasant curveball - as will happen to us all at times) and how the past is not a thing that can be escaped but a thing that must be lived with.

Gabriel can't help harking back to his past and the homophobia of his formative years. A nasty, small minded, Margaret Thatcher speech, Kenny Everett's Cupid Stunt (possibly not "all done in the best possible taste"), THAT AIDS advert, being called a bender, having his head flushed down the toilet at school, and having a spunking cock drawn on his face.

On the other side of the ledger are his memories of glory holes, bottles of poppers, and Take That's Pray video. Which brings some light relief. I'm not sure if the comedic, or vaguely fantastical, elements work quite as well as the straightforward drama but that's a very minor caveat in what was a gripping and hugely moving programme from start to finish.

While Young, Fee, Berrington, and Harris are all excellent throughout, it's worth shouting out some of the other, equally fine, performances. Sharon D. Clarke excels as Claire (Jake's foster mother), Gwyneth Keyworth as Becky (Jake's birth mother) and Alexandria Riley as Sharon (a counsellor) are also excellent as is Maria Doyle Kennedy's as Andy's mum Sandra. Then there's Shaheen Jafargholi as Celwyn, a bitchy drag queen and frenemy who has a love/hate relationship with Gabriel and Arwel Gruffydd as kindly Berwyn, an elder drag queen who acts almost as a surrogate parent to Gabriel.

The story, brilliantly, told by Lost Boys And Fairies is one of good people trying, and often struggling, to do the right thing. To show love to each other and extend that love to a child. In a world where it can be all too easy to be cynical, trying to spread love can be one of the hardest things to do and sometimes when trying to do so we can end up being our own worst enemies. Gabriel and Andy clearly love each other and they both clearly love Jake. Will that be enough? Wipe away your tears and find out.