It's A Sin - CH4 - Russel T Davies Starts Friday 22/1/21

[Elpenor]

I finished watching it this evening. I’m not old enough to remember the era, so no personal memories revisited. I can see how it could be traumatic / difficult for those who lived through the time.

I thought it was superb, and did well to paint the characters as human, not always perfect. They felt real to me.

Probably shouldn’t have watched it really as experiencing grief quite badly at present so a bit tearful whilst watching.

In terms of how it looked, 1981 when it began is closer to the end of WW2 than it is to the present day, maybe it was a bit closer still on the Isle of Wight?

Apologies for rambling post.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

In terms of how it looked, 1981 when it began is closer to the end of WW2 than it is to the present day, maybe it was a bit closer still on the Isle of Wight?

My experience of the Isle of Wight is one day trip in about 1984 so I don't really remember.

I did move to Lincolnshire in 1992 for work, and bits of it then seemed closer to the end of WW2 than the present day, so I'd not be surprised...

 

[friendofdorothy]

81 -91 were the years of my twenties. I came out in 1982 and moved to london in 84. So far it rings true to how I remember things.

Promiscuity was easy. Rumours about GRID (gay related immune deficiency) just about filtered through up north (think I first saw a programme on tv in 82 or 83 - but the idea of a disease only affecting gay men in san fransisco seemed a world away. I remember the rumours about it being related to poppers - we had no idea and didn't know what to believe for a number of years. There was no reliable saource of info. I remember how quickly men just disappeared.

People have forgotten or never knew how socially unacceptable it was to be lgbtq back then. How dangerous it could be - you could be sacked , refused a room in a hotel, refused a flat, refused service, be raped and beaten and the police not care. For men under 21 it was illegal. Men were arrested for so many things that aren't a crime now. We didn't trust the police - they might beat you up too. I met so many people who said they had been disowned / thrown out by their families that I delayed coming out to mine. AIDS, state homophobia, clause 28 and the sheer careless hatred of the media was brutal.

Being queer was a precarious way to live. It was traumatic just surviving that decade.

But the music was great!

Back to its a sin on TV- too many fucking ad breaks tatally breaking up the narrative.

 

[CNT36]

81 -91 were the years of my twenties. I came out in 1982 and moved to london in 84. So far it rings true to how I remember things.

Promiscuity was easy. Rumours about GRID (gay related immune deficiency) just about filtered through up north (think I first saw a programme on tv in 82 or 83 - but the idea of a disease only affecting gay men in san fransisco seemed a world away. I remember the rumours about it being related to poppers - we had no idea and didn't know what to believe for a number of years. There was no reliable saource of info. I remember how quickly men just disappeared.

People have forgotten or never knew how socially unacceptable it was to be lgbtq back then. How dangerous it could be - you could be sacked , refused a room in a hotel, refused a flat, refused service, be raped and beaten and the police not care. For men under 21 it was illegal. Men were arrested for so many things that aren't a crime now. We didn't trust the police - they might beat you up too. I met so many people who said they had been disowned / thrown out by their families that I delayed coming out to mine. AIDS, state homophobia, clause 28 and the sheer careless hatred of the media was brutal.

Being queer was a precarious way to live. It was traumatic just surviving that decade.

But the music was great!

Back to its a sin on TV- too many fucking ad breaks tatally breaking up the narrative.

First thing we've watched live on telly in a long time other than comedies and late night trash where we flick through the channels in the adverts. Fucking hell.

I want to watch more but the "Where will you be in ten years?" bit shook me up. I think I've gone soft.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

just went looking for a reference to something and found Gay in the 80s – A personal account of LGBT life in the 1980s in the UK, USA and Australia - not sure i have the time and energy for it now but will be back sometime...

 

[keithy]

I loved it but felt that lesbian activists were kind of erased. It was a shame to boil things down to gay men and straight allies, but overall a really good drama and hopefully people will watch it and understand that there is still a lot of work to be done.

 

[William of Walworth]

Back to its a sin on TV- too many fucking ad breaks tatally breaking up the narrative.

The rest of your post was a great and sobering read , f-o-d, but I just wanted to comment on the above -- YES, the ad breaks were stupidly annoying!

But after being gripped by episode one, we've got this on our 'must watch' list for every Friday now ...
(We watch TV live, and I appreciate that there aren't any spoilers in this thread (that I saw, anyway) from those who binge-watched ..... )

From what I've seen so far, I agree with Miss-Shelf 's review ....

 

[sojourner]

Watched episodes 3 and 4 last night. Those tshirts reminded me of the one I had for years, with a big silver heart outlined on the front, 'Alter Attitudes To Aids' above the heart, and 'Love and Passion still in fashion' on the sleeve. It was a really controversial and socially flammable tshirt back then, and I got in loads of arguments when I wore it to work, straight pubs etc.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I loved it but felt that lesbian activists were kind of erased. It was a shame to boil things down to gay men and straight allies, but overall a really good drama and hopefully people will watch it and understand that there is still a lot of work to be done.

as i think i've said further up the thread, i am a bit too young to have been involved in the early 80s, but how much mixing of gay men and lesbians was there then?

i'm aware of (for example) LGSM and some of the stuff round section 28 (although with the latter there were some lesbian activist groups and some gay men activist groups) but from earliest memories of 'the scene' at the end of the 80s / early 90s, most venues (in the bigger cities at least) tended to end up as mostly if not exclusively men or women (some of the latter had a 'gay men as guests' policy) with few being really mixed.

similarly my impression of early HIV / AIDS activism is that it was mainly self organised by gay men (GMFA, ACT-UP and so on)

some gay men / lesbians do still lead largely separate lives (personally, i don't really get this, especially when it gets to overt hostility) and for that matter there isn't one single 'gay community' and that's before L, B, T and everything else come in to the picture...

 

[sojourner]

I remember there being quite a lot of hostility in lesbian clubs towards gay men, going full-on nasty physical fighting at times.

 

[purenarcotic]

Lesbians did lots of stuff during the AIDS outbreak and agree with keithy they were largely erased from the show. Still thought it was brilliant and worth watching. But definitely ignored.

Just one example:

The lesbian 'blood sisters' who cared for gay men when doctors were too scared to

When fear of the Aids epidemic was mounting and blood reserves were running out, women stepped in

www.google.com

 

[CNT36]

as i think i've said further up the thread, i am a bit too young to have been involved in the early 80s, but how much mixing of gay men and lesbians was there then?

i'm aware of (for example) LGSM and some of the stuff round section 28 (although with the latter there were some lesbian activist groups and some gay men activist groups) but from earliest memories of 'the scene' at the end of the 80s / early 90s, most venues (in the bigger cities at least) tended to end up as mostly if not exclusively men or women (some of the latter had a 'gay men as guests' policy) with few being really mixed.

similarly my impression of early HIV / AIDS activism is that it was mainly self organised by gay men (GMFA, ACT-UP and so on)

some gay men / lesbians do still lead largely separate lives (personally, i don't really get this, especially when it gets to overt hostility) and for that matter there isn't one single 'gay community' and that's before L, B, T and everything else come in to the picture...

Perhaps some if it came from Russel T Davies own experiences or those of mates. If the scenes were as seperate as is being suggested above he may not have had enough knowledge or the confidence to put it on screen.
Did HIV spread through lesbian communities in the way it did through gay men? Did it have the same impact? Was the impact as bad or significantly worse than how it was affecting straight people at time?
I've read a few books on epidemics, watched a few documentaries and lectures and in hindsight they don't talk about this. All the early developments seemed to involve gay men.

 

[Miss-Shelf]

Thought this might be an interesting follow up as it chronicles health workers experience of the early days nursing HIV/AIDS patients Health Care Workers in HIV

 

[trashpony]

Perhaps some if it came from Russel T Davies own experiences or those of mates. If the scenes were as seperate as is being suggested above he may not have had enough knowledge or the confidence to put it on screen.
Did HIV spread through lesbian communities in the way it did through gay men? Did it have the same impact? Was the impact as bad or significantly worse than how it was affecting straight people at time?
I've read a few books on epidemics, watched a few documentaries and lectures and in hindsight they don't talk about this. All the early developments seemed to involve gay men.

Not directly. It was gay men who were the first hit but lots of lesbians staffed the Switchboard and supported their gay friends. Two of my friends who died from HIV had their end of life care provided by lesbians - friends and sisters. You have to remember that people were really fucking scared, no one really knew about transmission.

I was in London at the time - I started my 2nd degree in 1985. People knew about safe sex but there was still a lot of casual sex and actually the lesbian and gay community seemed pretty positive at the time. The openly lesbian and gay coffee shop First Out opened around then and a couple of friends worked there. We spent most nights flitting between the Scala and the Bell in Kings Cross and sometimes going to Heaven if we felt flush. In retrospect, there was an undercurrent of fear and maybe that's why the party atmosphere was a bit frenetic - some were a bit fatalistic and just thought fuck it I think.

For me and my friends, it was really late 80s that the fun stopped - when Derek Jarman started to become ill as he was a friend of a friend and then more and more men I knew were actually becoming ill and friends started to die. It was absolutely horrible just seeing healthy young men wasting away virtually overnight.

I do still have friends who are HIV positive and have been living with it for years and years. At that time, that just never seemed like that would happen - it felt like it was a death sentence.

I really remember that awful iceberg advert.

Anyway, I haven't watched the series yet, but I will because, while it was a terrible time in some ways, it was also a time of possibility and pushing boundaries and freedom (for me, anyway). I've enjoyed reading this thread - thanks

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I remember there being quite a lot of hostility in lesbian clubs towards gay men, going full-on nasty physical fighting at times.

i've never experienced that. did get caught on the fringes of a slight scuffle between some women (i assume lesbians) in a pub / club in deptford once, but a small amount of spilt beer was the worst of it.

i did tend to get some odd looks at gay venues when i used to go out with a lesbian colleague who became a good friend at one time, but nothing worse than the occasional odd look from people who misunderstood.

Just one example:

although the main example being quoted was in the US

Perhaps some if it came from Russel T Davies own experiences or those of mates. If the scenes were as seperate as is being suggested above he may not have had enough knowledge or the confidence to put it on screen.

Not directly. It was gay men who were the first hit but lots of lesbians staffed the Switchboard and supported their gay friends. Two of my friends who died from HIV had their end of life care provided by lesbians - friends and sisters. You have to remember that people were really fucking scared, no one really knew about transmission.

i think it's very much down to personal experiences / circles. i certainly get the impression (as backed up by this, and again the example of LGSM) that there was some mixing, particularly at the more lefty / activist end of things, but also a not insignificant proportion of gay men who don't / didn't see themselves as having anything in common with lesbians and not really wanting to have anything to do with them. (my own experience with a 'switchboard' organisation was getting involved when it was very close to going under having had a (male) chair who had managed to piss off all the women volunteers and a few of the men, some of the women wanting to set up something separate and women only, and the funding body - who seemed to think that there was a single cohesive 'LGB community' who all knew and socialised with each other, wanting to pull the plug if we didn't play nicely.)

not sure what the right course is for a writer. a writer of fiction / drama is going to draw on their own experiences to a greater or lesser extent. snag with being one of the few writers to tackle this subject is it's going to be seen as something approaching a historical record so maybe ought to be handled with more care.

 

[Kaka Tim]

I was in my teens and twenties throughout the 80s but didn't really know any gay men at the time - so this series was a real eye opener into what a total fucking nightmare AIDS was. I thought this was mostly brilliant, but

Spoiler

i wasn't sure about Richie's mum ending up very much the villain of the piece - (although keeley hawes was brilliant). I think RTD maybe should have concentrated his fire on the architects of the institutionalised homophobia that helped made AIDS so disastrous - the politicians, police chiefs,civil servants and the media - rather than a semi-phychotic overbearing mother.
And the "how did you not know your son was gay?" attack seemed unfair - people really didn't have a clue. Most people didn't even twig that freddie mercury was gay until he died - despite him being about as screamingly gay in his attire and demeanour as is humanly possible and calling his band "Queen". See also - elton john, liberace and many more
I lol'd at the ... adulteration ... of maggies beverage as I have herd several different versions of the same story via various gay friends

 

[ddraig]

Can we be careful of spoilers for those watching each week please?

 

[Kaka Tim]

Can we be careful of spoilers for those watching each week please?

soz - done

 

[ddraig]

soz - done

no worries ta, I shoulda probably put it in title

 

[William of Walworth]

I was in my teens and twenties throughout the 80s but didn't really know any gay men at the time - so this series was a real eye opener into what a total fucking nightmare AIDS was.

Very much this for my experience too -- I must be pretty similar in age.

 

[bellaozzydog]

My only real reference point is the dreadful doom laden adverts they put out

really beautiful, sad viewing.

Spoiler: Spoiler

I hated the dreadful mother ending, almost too much for one actor to pack in to what I assume is a role representing every family who rejected/ejected/treated badly their gay children

 

[friendofdorothy]

I'm a bit younger than the characters in this so thankfully didn't have to deal with friends dying - but the ramping up of homophobia on the back of the AIDS crisis certainly did affect my teenage years a great deal. And as a teenager I pretty much expected that I would contract HIV and die at some point before I was thirty. I did see an interview with Russell T Davies the other night, and he mentioned that he wanted to include a character that was out and had a positive relationship with their parents, to act as a contrast with the others - but actually when he thought back to his own experience he didn't know a single gay person in he early 80s who had even told their parents, because it was just so unacceptable. And I don't think that really changed much until the 90s.

I didn't come out to my parents for years after hearing the stories of friends being thrown out, disowned and abused.

 

[Red Sky]

Nice to see a Mk1 Ford Transit.

 

[friendofdorothy]

as i think i've said further up the thread, i am a bit too young to have been involved in the early 80s, but how much mixing of gay men and lesbians was there then?

i'm aware of (for example) LGSM and some of the stuff round section 28 (although with the latter there were some lesbian activist groups and some gay men activist groups) but from earliest memories of 'the scene' at the end of the 80s / early 90s, most venues (in the bigger cities at least) tended to end up as mostly if not exclusively men or women (some of the latter had a 'gay men as guests' policy) with few being really mixed.

similarly my impression of early HIV / AIDS activism is that it was mainly self organised by gay men (GMFA, ACT-UP and so on)

some gay men / lesbians do still lead largely separate lives (personally, i don't really get this, especially when it gets to overt hostility) and for that matter there isn't one single 'gay community' and that's before L, B, T and everything else come in to the picture...

In smaller towns everyone old leather queens, young dykes all had to go to tha same places together as there were so few places to go. But when I came to london it was possible to go to women only places most nights of the week. And there were dozens of men only places everynight of the week with ever taste and fetish catered for.

Very places were really mixed - I went to ;mixed' pub / clubs where me and my girl were the only women there. Eventually there was First Out, the Fallen Angel (though I mostly went on womens night) and the Lesbian and Gay Center. Clause 28 was a wake up call that we all rallied around. I didn't have any male gay friends until I joined the pride committee after 88.

I remember there being quite a lot of hostility in lesbian clubs towards gay men, going full-on nasty physical fighting at times.

The Lesbian clubs I went to in London the '80s didn't let men in. We were so out numbered if anything was 'mixed' it became just full of men. Think Candy bar changed that by only allowing men in as 'guests' of members
I remember being spat when drinking with a gay male friend in the 'mixed' Comptons in about '90.

 

[friendofdorothy]

Lesbians did lots of stuff during the AIDS outbreak and agree with keithy they were largely erased from the show. Still thought it was brilliant and worth watching. But definitely ignored.

Just one example:

The lesbian 'blood sisters' who cared for gay men when doctors were too scared to

When fear of the Aids epidemic was mounting and blood reserves were running out, women stepped in

www.google.com

The situation in america is very different because of the lack of affordable health care and the unwillingness of hospitals and clinics to treat people with aids. The LogBooks podcasts give a good idea of the situation here
the first 3 episodes of series 2 are about the emerging crisis in the '80s with lesbians who were involved like Lisa Power talking about it. www.thelogbooks - Google Search
I seem to recall there was a call for lesbians to sign up as blood donors as gay men were no longer allowed to give blood by the mid 8s . I remember being rejected as a potential blood donor as I was 'homosexual'.

Perhaps some if it came from Russel T Davies own experiences or those of mates. If the scenes were as seperate as is being suggested above he may not have had enough knowledge or the confidence to put it on screen.
Did HIV spread through lesbian communities in the way it did through gay men? Did it have the same impact? Was the impact as bad or significantly worse than how it was affecting straight people at time?
I've read a few books on epidemics, watched a few documentaries and lectures and in hindsight they don't talk about this. All the early developments seemed to involve gay men.

No HIV didn't spread through lesbian communities, while is was theoretically possible, by 1991 the only cases among lesbians in the uk had probably been contracted from sex with men or through sharing gear for intravenous drug use. I took part in a large scale sexual health study of lesbians at Charingcross hospital in the 90s. We were the lowest risk catagory.

I think it was first identified in San Francisco (or was it NY?) which had a huge gay population with many bath houses / sex clubs, as fictionalised by Amistead Maupin Tales of the City. Promiscuity was seen as very liberating in the 70s.

As many gay men generally slept with lots of other gay men - it spread first and quickly amongst gay men. Of course as the virus went undiagnosed for years, no one knew what it was. So men were being diagnosed with AIDS and as there was no treatment they died quickly. It took a while for HIV to be identified as the agentcausing AIDS and then time for a test for HIV to be developed. For years gay men were catching it and spreading it completely unawares.

The UK tabloids called it the GAY PLAGUE and it gave the media the prefect excuse to demonise gay people and spread rumour and fear. The levels of 'gay bashing', general abuse and casual homophobia was hateful. Remember we had no eqaulity protections then - you could be legally sacked, denied service or accomodation. And Thatcher legislated state homophia in the form of Section 28 in 1988. There was a documentary film made a couple of years ago called 'After 82' which tells the story from the people involved. Well worth watching.

 

[han]

I'm looking forward to starting this tonight...

And reading about the invisibility of lesbians in the series, that seems pretty accurate considering that although lesbians were very visible, we weren't really 'allowed' to participate in the world of gay men, certainly in the sticks, where I came from. I think that really changed in the 90s. It certainly did in the circles I was in, Bristol and London, largely due to clubbing and ecstasy...

But yeah. Very much looking forward to it. Except the ad breaks of course.

 

[trashpony]

I really wish I could share the video someone posted which is a clip from the Bell in Kings Cross in 1986 from an ITV documentary. Not only are quite a few people I knew in it, the dancing is fabulous

 

[kabbes]

I watched the first episode last night and had the same experience I always have with Russell T Davis — he gets a lot right in terms of story and setting but to call his characters even one-dimensional is stretching it and consequently I always just feel a bit... meh. The young guys (not just the main characters but the peripheral ones too) were essentially interchangeable naifs with no defining characteristics beyond the fact that they arrived in London overjoyed that they could now shag. We don’t really get any sense of who any of them are as people at all, so they don’t feel real, so I don’t care about them and I’m bored.

I’m always left a bit perplexed about exactly what it is that people love about his dramas. The main thing seems to be that people seem to be able to project themselves into the setting. Which is great and all but hardly an endorsement, because for this to happen, the characters themselves have to be ciphers.

Anyway, I feel no motivation to watch episode 2 but I will probably get bored and do so at some point. Maybe it will get better. I’m not optimistic though since others are saying they were already hooked by the end of episode 1.

 

[trashpony]

This was also posted in the group I‘m in - on a general thread talking about this series and bemoaning the lack of lesbians

I was diagnosed in 1987 and worked at THT and London Lighthouse until 1997. The valuable input from many Lesbians can not be underestimated and to their shame they have not reflected this. I can identify with the discrimination from other gay men (minority) when they found out I was HTLV3 positive but agree that the Lesbian perspective in supporting us is completely ignored. I was moved into a new flat in Haringey because my then boyfriend kicked me out because I was HIV. I slept on park benches in St James Park and had men offering to pay me to have sex with them, terrible times. I'd had the virus for a few years and had, what was then known as AIDS Related Complex (ARC). A Lesbian couple who had a small removal company helped, not only move me in but get new bits and pieces for my new flat. Lovely warm supportive women, I'll never forget their kindness.

It’s a shame that RTD didn’t talk to the men who were on the frontline because I know this is a pretty common experience and to write lesbians out is doing a huge disservice to the many women who picked up the pieces.

 

[planetgeli]

I've watched the lot. One-dimensional characters is bang on. Has to be said some pretty bad acting in places too. The first 3 were ok, episode 3 the best by far - then really disappointed by the last two.

Pretty similar to how I viewed Years and Years too. I don't get the RTD hype.