Long-awaited new LGBT+ drama It’s a Sin is on TV screens from 22 January 2021. The new Channel 4 and HBO Max series from Queer as Folk and Cucumber creator Russell T Davies takes us back to the 1980s, specifically, to the beginning of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in London. We have seen it.
Humour and humanity are at the heart of this sublime series about London’s gay community in the 1980s, from the creator of „Queer as Folk“.
The stellar cast includes singer Olly Alexander, as well as Stephen Fry and Neil Patrick Harris.
Russell T Davies’s new drama, It’s a Sin (Channel 4), is something of a companion piece, 20 years on, to his groundbreaking masterpiece Queer as Folk. The latter was the riotous celebration of gay urban life as led by three friends broadly representing different stages of exploration as they embraced life as hot single men. In essence, it was a gorgeous fantasy, designed to counteract both the historic worthiness and prejudice surrounding such depictions.
What it did not do was look much at the darkness out of which such freedom had emerged and which still shadowed the lives of its Canal Street party people. It didn’t, in short, deal with the effects of Aids on the gay community.
As the series moves through the decade, the subject matter naturally darkens but never loses its funniness or fleetness. It’s possible some will complain that Davies does not treat the subject as sombrely as it deserves. This is nonsense. Fleetness and funniness are the essences of life, and only by making them as central to characters, as Davies does, can you convey the depth of the tragedy about to unfold. It’s a Sin looks set not just to be to Queer as Folk’s companion piece but its companion masterpiece.
By telling this story through the eyes of warm, flawed and sometimes frustrating characters you’ll care about, it offers a heartbreaking reminder of the countless lives claimed by HIV/AIDS.
The new series can be streamed on HBO Max or HBO Go (for East European countries).
