By Guy Duncan, founder of Brand Equality, a lead marketing consultancy with a focus on strategy for LGBT+ diversity. He is also a member of National AIDS Trust’s Community Advisory Group. Duncan has been living with HIV for nearly 30 years.
It’s the sense of oblivion combined with the wide-eyed expectations of being young that resonate so powerfully in Russell T Davies’ “It’s A Sin”, a compelling new drama about the emergence of AIDS in 1980s London.
Like Davies’ late 1990s series “Queer as Folk”, this is a tale of a group of young men who come together in their first year of adulthood to forge the next chapters of their lives. Unlike the characters in his first TV drama, with a deadly virus providing the backdrop to “It’s A Sin”, viewers can’t quite be sure whether make it through their hedonistic rights of passage.
I recall the same sentiments when I first moved to central London as a 21-year-old gay man living in ‘80s Britain. Davies doesn’t mention the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s name in episode one, but her impact on society is felt throughout, from the parochial attitudes of Ritchie’s Isle of Wight family to the working-class roots that propel Colin to opportunities undreamt of by his Welsh family just 20 years before.
Sex education is minimal and limited to heterosexual sex. Ignorance is everywhere.
What also chimed with me was the faceless, cold attitudes held by people in power in the health services. I remember only too well they too were trying to wrestle with an unknown disease and were utterly unprepared, both practically and emotionally. Read more via Reuters
Most people have no idea what it was like to be young + gay in the 80s/90s. When straight friends were holding hands in the playground I was in gay bars where there were guys in wheelchairs with KS on their faces. The 1st man I fell for had AIDS. That was my adolescence. #ItsASin
— Patrick Strudwick (@PatrickStrud) January 22, 2021
#ItsASin is everything. And brought back so many memories. But mostly the tensions between gay friends at bedsides coming face to face with the families of the dying young men. And having to find some compromise. Often forced to live in the same flat during the final days.
— Jonathan Harvey (@JOJEHARVEY) January 23, 2021
Just finished #ItsASin
— Guy Lambert (@GRALWrites) January 23, 2021
No spoilers, but what you’ll witness with Ep 5 is one of the most amazing pieces of TV drama ever.@russelldavies63 is a genius. The voice of people who the world hates for being born different, and who reveals the true price we pay for that toxicity pic.twitter.com/rR2ISRtF84
We sat on the sofa and did #itsasin all in one huge gulp, and I'm now crying so much my throat hurts. Something perfect, straight from the heart. Russell T Davies is the very, very best we have. And he simply does not know how to be boring.
— Caitlin Moran (@caitlinmoran) January 23, 2021
Not yet 'out' to my family, in the '80s, I left homophobic suburbia to do a drama degree. Within weeks, I was visiting men dying of AIDS, alone in hospital. #ItsASin wasn't just an emotional watch, it's like viewing my life on TV. I know what happens next. Coz I lived that too. pic.twitter.com/GaAecFn3LD
— Stewart Who? (@DJstewartwho) January 23, 2021