'Don't talk to me about a VIRUS on a Friday night'
Russell T Davies only deals in event television. From creating Queer as Folk for Channel 4 in 1999, to bringing back Doctor Who in 2005, writing A Very English Scandal (part of the Hugh Grant renaissance) in 2018, or 2019’s ambitious, terrifying near-future cultural-political satire Years and Years, if Davies is involved, we will be watching.
And his latest show might just be his best and most important yet. It certainly has everything we expect from Davies – it is imbued with warmth, razor-sharp wit, characters we connect with instantly, and is quietly but unmistakably political.
It’s a Sin is the first British television drama to focus on the Aids epidemic of the 1980s. It is a story of solidarity and devotion through the most unthinkable, terrifying situation, following a group of young gay men who arrive in London, find each other, begin living as their true selves, but whose lives in and around London’s gay scene are cut short or forever changed by the arrival of the virus.
There is the initial denial. The confusion. The disbelief. The fear and the fury. And the huge, huge loss and heartbreak as their innocence is shattered.
Davies, 57, recalls the slow realisation that something awful was happening to gay men – and the understandable reluctance of so many to believe what was happening.
“The whole thing seemed impossible,” he says via Zoom, the head of a Cyberman on the sofa behind him. “We finally
