It's A Sin: A Masterpiece of LGBT+ Storytelling

By George Wright for myGwork

Over the weekend, I sat down with my housemates to watch Russell T Davies’ new LGBTQ+ drama, It's a Sin. While I had anticipated that it may be upsetting, I was not prepared for how eye-opening it would be to me about an era within very recent memory, which until now, I had shied away from.

The story of this five-part boxset, available now to stream on All4, follows five teenagers who arrive in London in 1981, aged 18 and finally able to explore a part of their lives that they have otherwise had to suppress. Throughout the episodes, we follow them as they grow up throughout the 80s, enjoying the partying and freedom that London brings while having to face up to the realities of the unfolding HIV/AIDS crisis.

I won’t spoil it, but I cannot recommend it enough. Particularly, for someone of my age, it has forced me to confront privileges I had previously given half-thought to, for which I owe to the work of those who came before. Being born in the last few months of the last millennium, by the time I got to school, Section 28, the dangerous legislation that banned schools from “promoting” homosexuality – discussed during the series – had just been repealed. Growing up, as much as I fretted, I was fortunate enough that my parents were supportive of me, enabling me to come out at a young age and grow in a way that many in my generation have not been able to, and even fewer in the generations before.

But more poignant is the change around HIV/AIDS. With each episode, the information the gang has evolves: from being scared to touch anything someone with HIV has touched, to eventually seeing treatments and medicines to try and prolong the life of those living with the implications of the virus. What stood out the most to me was the difference in culture: today, we take for granted the simple message that undetectable means untransmittable, and that medicines and treatments have enabled us to achieve this monumental step. Throughout the series we see characters scared to engage in any form of intimacy, afraid that they may catch a virus that was killing everyone who caught it. That this isn’t the case today – as the Terrence Higgins Trust was quick to make clear, the HIV/AIDS diagnoses in It’s a Sin are not the same as they are today – is something people like myself, who came long after treatments changed lives, assume will always be there.

That’s not to say it isn’t in our minds. My parents are Londoners: my mother worked in department stores during the 80s. Part of her support for me as I came out was because of all of the men she worked with who had caught HIV and passed away soon after. Particularly in my sexual health, my mother has been keen to instill in me the lessons she learned from the 80s, because of the extent of the impact it had on her. Unlike my mother, and her generation, I have never had to attend a funeral for someone who has died of AIDS. In It’s a Sin, we see the characters doing so regularly. It stands testament to the reality that much of a generation were scythed down by a disease that was mocked by the press, covered up by the government, and came at a time when stigma against our community was already high. People who should have grown old, to have become mentors to us, as we hope to be for the generation of LGBTQ+ people who come after us.

When we finished It’s a Sin, we were all broken. We sat there for minutes after the final credits finished, in silence, processing what we had watched. It taught us about HIV/AIDS, it taught us about a lost generation of LGBTQ+ people, it taught us about a part of our intrinsic history that we knew about, but so rarely spent the time to actually learn about. Even now, days later, it sits on our minds, and that is testament to the superb writing of Russell T Davies’ writing – to put into words his own lived experience, growing up in the 80s as a gay man – and the strong acting skills of the LGBTQ+ cast he assembled to tell this story. If you watch just one box set this lockdown, make it It’s a Sin.

If you’re old enough to remember it, it’s a faithful missive to your lived experience. If you’re not, like me, it is a powerful reminder of how our community got here, and the thanks we owe those people who made it all possible.