Gay adoption tale will have you reaching for the tissues.

'Lost Boys and Fairies' deals with heavy themes including HIV, homophobia and grief, but writer Daf James infuses it with a playfulness that offsets the darkness

- Nick Hilton

“Any arsehole can just shoot their load and make a baby,” comes the judgement of a prospective father in Lost Boys and Fairies, a new BBC One three-part drama. It takes a special kind of consciousness, however, to adopt a child. And that’s the journey undertaken here, in this Neverland-infused story of growing up, just in time.

Gay couple Gabriel (Sion Daniel Young) and Andy (Fra Fee) have decided to adopt a child. This byzantine process – facilitated by a kindly social worker, Jackie (Elizabeth Berrington) – is further complicated by Gabriel’s personal history. As the two men move towards a new life with a tricky seven-year-old boy called Jake (Leo Harris), Gabriel is forced to confront the challenges of his own childhood, having grown up in a repressed, and hypermasculine, Welsh society that didn’t understand the closeted creative in its midst. When the panel convenes to assess the duo’s suitability to adopt, candidates are judged for their “health, finances, and childhood”. And only one of these causes Gabriel and Andy any issues.