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It’s a Sin: A Life-Affirming Miniseries About Death
Russell T. Davies’s latest series set in the 1980s to the backdrop of the growing AIDS epidemic captures a world of fun, excitement, and terror in a tale of coming of age and coming out.
The five-episode miniseries is set in London from 1981 to 1991. A group of 18-year-olds begins their new lives. As they live and love a virus begins to loom over them. It premiered on Channel Four in January and comes to HBO Max on 18th February.
After a decade in children’s television and soap operas, Russell T. Davies made his reputation with Queer as Folk (1999–2000), a show that moved gay characters on television from the shadows and placed them front and centre. As groundbreaking as it was, Davies recalled members of the gay press being outraged that the drama didn’t touch on AIDS.
It’s a Sin covers that health crisis in a way no other British television series has. Olly Alexander leads an exemplary cast that also features Keeley Hawes, Stephen Fry, Neil Patrick Harris, Omari Douglas, Callum Scott Howells, Nathaniel Curtis, and Lydia West. It’s notable that the production cast gay actors for gay roles.
Although a period piece it’s not a series that needs to rely on haircuts, fashions, songs, and personalities of the time, although a few do creep in naturally. In its relationships, views, and lifestyles it feels authentic. Davies, of course, was of an age to be around the scene across the decade that he’s writing about. What could seem cliched in the hands of lesser writers is masterful in Davies’s hands — religious fathers, parents in denial, closeted Tory politicians — it all fits and it all feels real.
The writing’s so good it needs only small moments to show pervading attitudes of thousands at the time. This is best exemplified in the scene where Ritchie’s dad gives him a packet of condoms so he doesn’t ‘get a girl into trouble’. Ritchie sniggers at the thought before tossing the packet off the ferry they’re on.
