It’s a Sin review: Russell T Davies’ Channel 4 drama is by turns uplifting and devastating

The writer’s much-anticipated series about young men living through the Aids crisis doesn’t disappoint

Trauma takes time to release its grip. It has taken decades for Russell T. Davies - creator, among other quite important things, of such iconic LGBTQ+ TV as Queer as Folk and Banana, Cucumber and Tofu -  to be able to write this five-part drama. It’s hardly surprising - set in London at the start of the Eighties and spanning the decade, it follows a group of gay men trying to follow their dreams, just as the shadow of Aids is beginning to darken their bright young existence - like Davies, who was 18 in 1981.

Shame, terror, disbelief, denial - all the responses his characters exhibit, the writer admits to having gone through himself at the time. The fulcrum of the series is 18 year-old Ritchie Tozer (played as suitably callow by Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander), a wannabe actor from a conservative family on the Isle of Wight (Keeley Hawes’ turn as his mother, Val, is a slow-burn masterclass) who, after a genuinely mortifying start, gets into the swing of swinging gay London quicker than you can say “Where’s the lube?”

It's A Sin

He’s joined in a shabby, riotous houseshare by a charmingly motley bunch - gorgeously camp Roscoe Babatunde (Omari Douglas), whose Nigerian father wants to send him back home to be straightened out; gorgeous drama hunk Ash Mukherjee (Nathaniel Curtis); and Colin Morris-Jones, a sweet, reserved Welshman (Callum Scott Howells) who works as a tailor’s assistant - and at the centre of it all, Ritchie’s fellow acting student Jill Baxter (Dracula and Years and Years’s Lydia West - luminous). Jill is based on one of Davies’ own dearest and oldest friends, the actress Jill Nalder (who plays the fictional Jill’s mum in one of a few little nods to real life that include a flick at Doctor Who) and, in tribute, represents all those women who, when the sh*t really hit the fan, stepped up with action and unconditional love when even many dying men’s mothers couldn’t or wouldn’t be there.

The series will go out weekly, and spoilers would ruin it, but it’ll be no surprise that things start to go south rather suddenly for Ritchie and his friends as people around them start getting sick. What is a surprise is to be reminded how little anybody, including the medical profession, understood about HIV and Aids in the early days, leading some families to destroy all their lost sons’ belongings, or to the unlawful locking up of some patients, with food left outside their rooms until a family member or friend came to carry it, cold and congealed, across the threshold. It’s hard, in an era of excess information, to grasp just how difficult it was to find out anything concrete about a mysterious but deadly illness that was ravaging an entire community; or, conversely, just how easy it was for the wildfire of misinformation to spread without the oxygen of the internet. Turns out fear is the best engine for fake news, whether you’re using a tablet or a typewriter.

It's A Sin

All of which makes It’s a Sin sound doomy as hell. It’s not. It’s gorgeous. It’s bright and colourful and inclusive, it’s full of warmth, joy and celebration - the soundtrack, obviously, is stonking, and the parties will make you want to whip up a Pina Colada, Club Tropicana-style - and humour (look out for a beautifully understated cameo from Neil Patrick Harris as a cosily coupled-up older gay man, and a broader but still enjoyable one from Stephen Fry as a Thatcher-worshipping Tory MP). It’s even-handed and kind and evokes sympathy for its characters even while depicting what now seems like unconscionable cruelty or stupidity. It’s also poignant, shocking and will leave you sobbing into your coconut cocktail. Vintage Davies, in other words. Just watch it, it’d be a sin not to.

It’s a Sin starts on Channel 4 on Friday January 22 at 9pm, with a new episode each week

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in