Just two days ago Russell T Davies highly anticipated new queer drama It’s A Sin was released on the UK’s Channel 4 . Since then its has become the most buzzed about and most binge-watched LGBTQ series for a very long time. Davies, whose long resume includes the ground-breaking Queer As Folk series, is being greeted with rave reviews like that from The Guardian as a ‘poignant masterpiece.’ And that is not an exaggeration.
It’s A Sin, which has been labelled an AIDS drama, is so much more than just that. Any gay man of any age who had a very difficult ‘coming out’ and had to deal with a hostile family will be able to relate to this story. It’s of three Brit provincial 18 year old boys who in 1981 had no choice then to escape to London to become their true selves.
Ritchie (Olly Alexander) the most gregarious of the three, left his suburban home on the Isle of Wight (a small island of the UK ‘s south coast that is a favorite of retirees). His plans to study Law soon evaporated and he decided to be a drama student so he could become a famous actor. Egged on his new best friend Jill (Lydia West) the closeted Ritchie soon loses his virginity and once he has discovered sex, he’s well and truly hooked.
Soft spoken Welsh Colin (Callum Scott Howells) has left his wheelchair bound mother back home to begin a new life as an apprentice in a Savile Row Store. He has to fight off his creepy old boss, but at the same time he is befriended by the Store’s senior salesman Henry (Neil Patrick Harris). When Henry invites him home to have dinner and meet Pablo his boyfriend of some 30 years, we actually see tears in Colin’s eyes. This happy domestic lifestyle that he never knew was possible, is exactly the life he would love to have.
The third young man is Roscoe (Omari Douglas) who is living with his ultra-religious Nigerian family who having discovered his sexuality want to send him back to Nigerian. He makes a very dramatic (and hilarious ) exit and eventually ends up meeting Ritchie.
How the three end up as flatmates is quite organic in a London gay scene which is still small enough that everyone seemingly knows everyone else. Their apartment, which they also share with Jill and one of her hot gay friends Ash (Nathanial Curtis) quickly becomes party center. Davies reminds us all too well, how outrageous and how much fun life really was back then.
As the years click by and the boys seem like the new life of theirs is nirvana, world starts to trickle through from America about a new disease that has been labelled ‘the gay cancer” . Back then anything concerning the LGBTQ community was rarely covered in the media, but as the disease started being diagnosed in the UK, the news trickled out.
Right from the start any mention of HIV and then AIDS was full of rampant homophobia and hate mongering. A lot of it created by sheer ignorance but most of it festered by so-called religious intolerance.
When even Ritchie and his group start becoming aware of the epidemic they chose denial as so many of us did back then. It is only Jill who grasps the potential fatality of it all and chooses to learn whatever she can in order to help educate her reluctant gay friends.
As sad as this pandemic becomes and as angry and scared as it made us all, there is however something very comforting seeing and hearing Davies’s words. Usually most of what has been written on AIDS has been by heterosexuals, and now for once our story is being told by one of our own.
No spoilers here but as the boy’s fate is now out of their own hands, It’s A Sin, reminds us sharply that if you were not able to be treated in London or another metropolitan city then you were even worse off. Instead of medical staff with actual experience of treating AIDS patients, or with the same full array of the latest meds, you were placed in locked up hospital wards on your own.
Even worse was the way family’s took control of their dying children’s lives whilst still harboring both ignorance and hostility of their lifestyle. Shutting out a gay’s man ‘logical family’ (as opposed to his biological one’) was the cruelest thing ever . There is a scene in Church where the boyfriend was banished from a funeral and all the friends who had never wavered from the bedside, replaced by relatives who had been absent when he was alive. That sadly struck home so hard with me.
If you lived through this period and survived it, then this TV series will hit you particularly hard , but you still need to see it. Davies also wrote this as much for the queer men born after this time.. As we rarely get our history re-told with such accuracy and sheer compassion and love, this is unmissable for all of our community.
We can relate to these boys story as not only did we also lack any gay role models, but as ‘survivors’ we were forced to form our own and grow up much quicker than we had planned.
Blessed with such sublime acting throughout ….. helped no doubt that Davies had made them all such well-rounded characters …… It’s A Sin is bound to sweep up at the Awards season. We came away, still sobbing, but also remembering how these young men had such a zest for living and enjoyed it the full before their physical lives were caught short.
If Davies has planted any sort of message in this story it is that we should all take full advantage of how glorious life really is.
P.S. Queerguru viewed this for FREE on https://www.channel4.com/ from the US via a VPN . Easy Peasy. Otherwise you can wait until later this year when HBO Max will release it in the US
