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This first look at Dustin Lance Black’s LGBT drama series ‘When We Rise’ will give you goosebumps

By Will Stroude

After months in the offing, we’ve finally got our first look at eagerly-anticipated LGBT drama series When We Rise – and boy does it look good.

Produced by Dustin Lance Black and Gus Van Sant – the Oscar-winning duo behind 2009’s Harvey Milk biopic Milk – the eight-hour, seven-episode series is set to tell the full and unflinching history of the US gay rights movement, starting with the infamous Stonewall Riots of 1969.

The series, which is set to air in the US on ABC in February, is based in part on the memoir of the same name released earlier this year by renowned LGBT and AIDS activist Cleve Jones.

It also features a host of big-name stars, including Rosie O’Donnell, The Hurt Locker’s Guy Pearce, Six Feet Under’s Rachel Griffiths, Weeds star Mary-Louise Parker, The Wire’s Michael K. Williams, Nip/Tuck’s Dylan Walsh, The West Wing’s Mary McCormack and the one and only Whoopi Goldberg.

After the controversy elicited by Roland Emmerich’s big screen gay history outing Stonewall last year, the signs from the first two-minute teaser trailer for When We Rise when its comes to accurately portraying the diversity of the early LGBT rights movement look good.

Sound-tracked by a bombastic rendition of the Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, it’s enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Roll on 2017, we say.

When We Rise is set to hit US screens in February on ABC. Watch the first-look below:

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