"It's A Sin"

PeterRS · January 7, 2021

Can any of us forget when we watched our first episode of the TV series "Queer as Folk"? It didn't matter if it was the UK original series or the US series. I can remember sitting in the living room of a friend in England's Lake District. We'd both been out to the pub and were a little drunk. Then he said I had to see the first episode he'd recorded. So well after midnight with yet more beer I watched in disbelief that this series about gay men, including one very young, with an extremely graphic visualisation of gay sex had been shown on British terrestrial television. I later bought vdo of the two series. Then later in Bangkok I found the American series in a vdo store in MBK.

The creator of the series, Russell T. Davies, is one of Britain's most acclaimed gay screenwriters. Even he was surprised at the show's success. But did you ever think about something? The acronyms HIV and AIDS are never uttered once in the series even though a character with HIV appears briefly.

Davies finally came to the realisation that he could no longer avoid writing about HIV and the pandemic which started as he was starting his sexual life. Many of his friends and lovers who died in the 1980s were said to have died of pneumonia or cancer. AIDS was rarely mentioned. Even today stigma still exists, often fuelled by ignorance and fear. "It's A Sin" is Davies' new TV series which has AIDS at the centre of the drama. It will be aired in the UK on Channel 4 in late January. Hopefully it may soon become available on youtube or other channels.

There is an excellent article about Davies and his life in today's Guardian. It starts like this -

Quote

There are things I can’t say here. Men I dare not name. The first man I ever had sex with. A man I loved for three months in 1988. That hilarious friend I spent a mad week with in Glasgow. All of them dead, now. And they all died of Aids.

But I can’t say their names because their families said they died of cancer or pneumonia. And they maintain that story to this day. Even now, I’ve had to change a few details in those opening sentences, just in case. The stigma and fear of Aids was so great that a family could go through the funeral, the wake and then decades of mourning without saying what really happened.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/03/russell-t-davies-i-looked-away-for-years-finally-i-have-put-aids-at-the-centre-of-a-drama

PeterRS · February 11, 2021

Unfortunately I have not seen It's a Sin but keep hoping I will find it somewhere. So far, the comments have been extremely good. The Hollywood Reporter ends its review - "The cast's performances are uniformly terrific with Alexander and West in particular embodying the youthful radiance the virus slowly steals from its victims." The Telegraph wrote, "Fear and confusion and panic build, and the prejudice against the gay community is shocking."

AIDS affected many of us in ways we could never have imagined. I can never forget a weekend in October 1984. Three Japanese friends of mine had a birthday within days of each other. They invited me to a joint birthday party even though I lived hours away. I told them there was no way I could be there. As the weekend came close, I changed my mind. These were all really good friends. We had had such fun together. Air tickets were not expensive and so I decided to surprise tham. When I knocked on the door of the small apartment, there were hugs and kisses all around. The party was great. During the course of the evening I met a young man for the first time and he came back to my hotel when the party was over. He was great and I was sorry when he had to leave the next morning.

Within 5 years, my three friends were dead of AIDS.

Other reactions to the series are here -

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/feb/10/its-a-sin-there-is-such-a-raw-truth-to-it