I really enjoyed the first season of Transparent. I loved Jill Soloway's work as a writer on SIX FEET UNDER and the one of her two or three movies that I've seen. She does crazy enmeshed and not always admirable families really well. This series drew on her own experiences as the child of a transgender woman who came out and transitioned late in life. I don't know if her parent is still alive or what she thinks of the show if she is. And although Jill used a cisgender male actor to play Maura she did try to make it as real and respectful of real trans people as possible, enlisting the writer Jennifer Boylan as a consultant. Boylan wrote THIS about her participation in the series and the portrayal of trans people in the media:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/boylan-tran...
I think I'll have the articles title printed on a t-shirt...