The 1980s were a time when young gay men were turned into something to fear

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