It's A Sin - CH4 - Russel T Davies Starts Friday 22/1/21
- Thread starter ddraig
- Start date
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Finished watching last night and thought this is far and away the best thing RTD has written in years. It's still got quite a few of his favourite tropes in that I find a bit annoying by their repeated use, but in this it worked because he can do them really well. Richies 'the H plague' soliloquy was excellently done (and all too accurate). It brought up so many things I'd forgotten about (lying about mortgages) and thing I never knew (Colin's hospital imprisonment being a not uncommon fate for early AIDS sufferers). It caught the mood and humour of the time and place and it even had an ending! Some of the supporting cast were thinly drawn and I could have done without Stephen Fucking Fry, but those were small prices to pay.
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
I've seen the whole thing - can't say I enjoyed it, the 80s and Aids was that grim. I didn't really like most of the characters, were we supposed to like/ sympathise the Richie character? 'La' tshirts are being advertised as 'iconic' - iconic of what? the in joke of a fictional group of self obsessed friends?
I didn't mind that there were no lesbians portayed, this is the story of aids and gay men after all, but was a bit annoyed that we were left out in favour of a straight character, who was shown on the phone in what looked like the cramped old gay switchboard office.
I had booked to go to the oversubscribed discussion with Lisa Power and RTD tomorrow. Lisa was really answering the phones at the Gay switchboard in this time (later L&G switchboard now lgbt switchboard) they didn't have hetrosexual volunteers (and still don't) Anyway much as I like Lisa, I've cancelled to leave space for those who really liked the series.
I didn't mind that there were no lesbians portayed, this is the story of aids and gay men after all, but was a bit annoyed that we were left out in favour of a straight character, who was shown on the phone in what looked like the cramped old gay switchboard office.
I had booked to go to the oversubscribed discussion with Lisa Power and RTD tomorrow. Lisa was really answering the phones at the Gay switchboard in this time (later L&G switchboard now lgbt switchboard) they didn't have hetrosexual volunteers (and still don't) Anyway much as I like Lisa, I've cancelled to leave space for those who really liked the series.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
On a lighter note, I was happy to see Shaun Dooley playing a sympathetic character for once. He’s a superb actor, but so good at playing arseholes/ baddies you barely see him in any other role. I rather enjoyed both seeing him playing a good guy for once, as well as the minor twist of him turning out to be that in the first place, given that the series was hinting throughout he was going to be your average bigot homophobic father likely to shun his own son in his deathbed.
The mother though, what a perfectly odious character- another great performance,
The mother though, what a perfectly odious character- another great performance,
Johnny Vodka
The Abominable Scotsman
1 episode to go. That 'la' thing is really, really grating.
Johnny Vodka
The Abominable Scotsman
All done. A few wobbles along the way, but I think that final episode drags it into the excellent category.
DietCokeGirl
Fishing in the rivers of life
Binged the whole thing today, thought it was excellent.
sptme
我打酱油的
I thought the lack of lesbians was it's main weakness tbh. Can't really say if the main female character is straight though, she has no visible sexuality, she never has a boyfriend and only exists as a support human for the gay men.
Overall, I thought it was an important and powerful piece of work despite those criticisms.
Johnny Vodka
The Abominable Scotsman
Maybe she's asexual? I've known some women who seem happiest when hanging around gay men.
I read somewhere that neither the main protagonists nor background people were nearly cloney enough. That may be true, although plenty of gay people do/did not dress clonily, but would everybody in the fashion of the moment be good tv?
I did keep assuming that she'd come out at some point, but then we got to the last episode and it hadn't happened.
that's silly. the cast who were cloney were so very much so they more than made up for others not following that particular fashion trend.
and speaking of Jill, BBC News interview with the real Jill Nalder today
It's A Sin: The woman who inspired Russell T Davies' Aids drama
Jill Nalder, who lost three friends to Aids in the 1980s, inspired one of the characters in the TV hit.
www.bbc.co.uk
It was here:
"Roy Brown also feels the central group of gay pals could have been more accurately represented, insisting the gay scene in those days was full of “clones” rather than the likes of Ritchie and his mates.
“The [clone] aesthetic was checked shirts, the clone moustache or sideburns, the whole look, and then you had the factions outside of that: you had the punks, the new romantics, the rockabillies, the rocker girls, the skinheads, the rude boys, Black guys who were part of a clone scene, a very young scene as well,” Roy remembers. “It was very diverse.”
In Huffington Post. It seems a bit quibbly.
‘It Would Be Friends Of Friends, Then Your Friend’: The It’s A Sin Era, Remembered By Those Who Survived It
“It started with whispers, rumours... almost gossip. It was terrifying, even at the beginning."
Just finished watching this. Oh God, so sad.
Then I had a look for some reviews. I know it's The Spectator but Jesus...
www.spectator.co.uk
Then I had a look for some reviews. I know it's The Spectator but Jesus...
You'll wish you were gay: Channel 4's It's a Sin reviewed
To promote his new drama series about Aids in the early 1980s, Russell T. Davies insisted in an interview that gay characters should be played only by actors who are actually gay. This was maddening for a number of reasons, starting with blatant hypocrisy. One of the things that made Davies’s...
www.spectator.co.uk
Johnny Vodka
The Abominable Scotsman
Just finished watching this. Oh God, so sad.
Then I had a look for some reviews. I know it's The Spectator but Jesus...
You'll wish you were gay: Channel 4's It's a Sin reviewed
To promote his new drama series about Aids in the early 1980s, Russell T. Davies insisted in an interview that gay characters should be played only by actors who are actually gay. This was maddening for a number of reasons, starting with blatant hypocrisy. One of the things that made Davies’s...
He's only reviewing the first couple of episodes, I think, which do make it all look like a lot of fun...
The headline is crass. There are other things in that piece that are also problematic, like this, for example:
Southlondon
The river's there for a reason
I was living and working in a prominent gay cabaret bar from the early 90’s and I have to say I found this series absolutely excellent. There’s only so far you can go in developing characters in 5 episodes but I found them real and as deep as they needed to be.
it was a time of great fear and sadness. I remember clearly the numbers of gaunt sick young men drinking the nights away in the safety of gay pubs momentarily escaping the horrors of the epidemic. The volunteers shaking buckets by the doors raising funds for the charities emerging to educate snd support our community, The fear and regret of waking up in the morning next to last nights trade wondering if this was the time your luck ran out.
But this was also a time when the words ‘gay community’ really meant something. And I mean ‘gay’ in the widest sense. People mention the absence of lesbians in the series and I wonder if that simply reflects RTD’s personal experience because I remember armies of lesbians organising rotas to support dying young men shunned by their families and in many cases their lovers, cooking, feeding, and driving them to hospital appointments.
There Was a clone scene but that tended to be concentrated in a few cruisy men only bars by the early 90’s and I don’t remember noticeable communities of punks or ‘alternative’ types on the scene at that time as it was mainly men jumping around to light pop music and that includes big old leather queens. Clubs like Trade playing cutting edge dance music came along but the majority of the London scene was made up of a network of pubs large and small, most in the shittiest run down neighbourhoods, boarded up windows looking like Derelict dumps. Yet open the door and a bright loud glitzy world centred around a stage lit with mirror balls bright overdressed drag queens in all their glory ready to distract the audience from the horrors of the real world waiting outside those doors.
the fear and prejudice pumped up by the media didn’t always remain outside our community as there were always plenty of gay men happy to join in the stigmatising of AIDS victims and fake news cost lives then as it does now. I lost friends who refused the chance of taking new emerging meds to prolong their lives long enough for the more effective combination therapy to arrive because of their solid beliefs that HIV was all a big-pharma plot to wipe out gay people. Even when triplecombination was showing all the signs of being an effective treatment there will still people who died because of their false beliefs.
They were for sure, terrible times, all the things mentions in the series I remember - the burning of personal belongings and smashing glasses - I remember those exact things happening. Each of those characters I can place from social groups I knew. It’s so real to me I think it’s something that only a person who experienced those times could ever have written. It’s so relevant for today’s times as well. Those of us that got through those early dark days and survived with our HIV are living with a virus that still kills 3/4 million people a year and yet has never been declared a pandemic. There is still no cure for it but every morning when I take my little pill that keeps the virus undetectable in my bloodstream and untransmissable to others I’m reminded of the countless funerals I attended of friends and acquaintances long gone and the frailty of my own existence. But I also look back whistfully at a time when the words ‘gay community’ really meant something and it included gay men, women, trans folk and even straights. We didn’t sub-divide ourselves as people do now it was, in the main, one community and No matter how marginalised and stigmatised the virus made us in the wider world, we were strong together.
I have cried freely many times over this incredible piece of television but it’s made me remember and as a community we should always remember the horrors but also the strength of a community that largely rose up to the challenge and refused to just roll over and die quietly in a corner.
the scene wasn’t uniform and it was so different in the pre-old Compton street times but it held a community that I am so pleased and proud to have been a part of.
I was too old for queer as folk to mean much to me as it showed a different type of scene that emerged post-AIDS, but I think it’s a sin is incredible and important
it was a time of great fear and sadness. I remember clearly the numbers of gaunt sick young men drinking the nights away in the safety of gay pubs momentarily escaping the horrors of the epidemic. The volunteers shaking buckets by the doors raising funds for the charities emerging to educate snd support our community, The fear and regret of waking up in the morning next to last nights trade wondering if this was the time your luck ran out.
But this was also a time when the words ‘gay community’ really meant something. And I mean ‘gay’ in the widest sense. People mention the absence of lesbians in the series and I wonder if that simply reflects RTD’s personal experience because I remember armies of lesbians organising rotas to support dying young men shunned by their families and in many cases their lovers, cooking, feeding, and driving them to hospital appointments.
There Was a clone scene but that tended to be concentrated in a few cruisy men only bars by the early 90’s and I don’t remember noticeable communities of punks or ‘alternative’ types on the scene at that time as it was mainly men jumping around to light pop music and that includes big old leather queens. Clubs like Trade playing cutting edge dance music came along but the majority of the London scene was made up of a network of pubs large and small, most in the shittiest run down neighbourhoods, boarded up windows looking like Derelict dumps. Yet open the door and a bright loud glitzy world centred around a stage lit with mirror balls bright overdressed drag queens in all their glory ready to distract the audience from the horrors of the real world waiting outside those doors.
the fear and prejudice pumped up by the media didn’t always remain outside our community as there were always plenty of gay men happy to join in the stigmatising of AIDS victims and fake news cost lives then as it does now. I lost friends who refused the chance of taking new emerging meds to prolong their lives long enough for the more effective combination therapy to arrive because of their solid beliefs that HIV was all a big-pharma plot to wipe out gay people. Even when triplecombination was showing all the signs of being an effective treatment there will still people who died because of their false beliefs.
They were for sure, terrible times, all the things mentions in the series I remember - the burning of personal belongings and smashing glasses - I remember those exact things happening. Each of those characters I can place from social groups I knew. It’s so real to me I think it’s something that only a person who experienced those times could ever have written. It’s so relevant for today’s times as well. Those of us that got through those early dark days and survived with our HIV are living with a virus that still kills 3/4 million people a year and yet has never been declared a pandemic. There is still no cure for it but every morning when I take my little pill that keeps the virus undetectable in my bloodstream and untransmissable to others I’m reminded of the countless funerals I attended of friends and acquaintances long gone and the frailty of my own existence. But I also look back whistfully at a time when the words ‘gay community’ really meant something and it included gay men, women, trans folk and even straights. We didn’t sub-divide ourselves as people do now it was, in the main, one community and No matter how marginalised and stigmatised the virus made us in the wider world, we were strong together.
I have cried freely many times over this incredible piece of television but it’s made me remember and as a community we should always remember the horrors but also the strength of a community that largely rose up to the challenge and refused to just roll over and die quietly in a corner.
the scene wasn’t uniform and it was so different in the pre-old Compton street times but it held a community that I am so pleased and proud to have been a part of.
I was too old for queer as folk to mean much to me as it showed a different type of scene that emerged post-AIDS, but I think it’s a sin is incredible and important
Southlondon
The river's there for a reason
A lot of survivors didn’t and perhaps that’s the point.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Two episodes in now, which is remarkable as i currently struggle with tv series, esp this modern habit of ‘binging’ but am watching one a week and am itching to watch the next one as soon as the previous episode ends.
Love it, so well written, if not exactly forensic in depicting events.
Some fantastic young actors there who deserve bright futures
Love it, so well written, if not exactly forensic in depicting events.
Some fantastic young actors there who deserve bright futures
han
love is the answer
Great post. Thankyou for sharing.
lazythursday
Well-Known Member
Interesting - I came out in early 1991, and was living in Manchester, and to be honest I never really discovered a genuine gay community. Just a fairly shallow, unfriendly drinking scene that didn't feel like a place I much wanted to be at all (perhaps coloured also by some experiences with predatory older men). I'm sure it was there, it just never felt there for me, and the fact I didn't ever really experience that sense of community is something I've always regretted.
Southlondon
The river's there for a reason
I’m not that familiar with Manchester at that time, but I know it was before the rise of canal street and London was definitely the centre of gay life in the UK in those days so I’m sure it would have been very different and far more isolating away from the capital. And of course that was/is the reason so many young gay people settle in London. Perhaps some of the richness and diversity of the London ‘scene’ was due to the fact that people were drawn here from all over the country, and being a Londoner in biased and will always say London was us and always will be the best
Having said that I know Manchester was at the forefront of fighting the stigma of AIDS and fighting infection in the early days I believe it was gay manchunians who started the practice of providing free condoms and lube in gay venues and this was rolled out across the country. You had a virulently homophobic chief Constable up there in the 80’s and you had a core of activists who formed an Act up branch and organised some massive protests in the city centre, and set up a telephone helpline. All the meetings to establish these things would most likely have taken place in those little pubs you talk about. Groups of angry young people refusing to be quiet in the shadows and taking responsibility for leadership in the face of the pandemic, with the gay scene largely providing the means to raise funds and access our community. This happened throughout the country not just London, but scale will always make London more prominent I guess
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