Why We Need More Shows Like "It’s A Sin"

By Morgan Lightle

Image: Amazon Prime Video

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled AIDS Committee of Toronto executive director John Maxwell’s name.

It was impossible for me to watch It’s A Sin, Russell T. Davies’ miniseries about a group of young gay friends living in London, England in the 1980s, without seeing myself in the characters. I completely identified with these young gay men, who had embarrassing first-time sexual encounters, were sometimes hesitant to be themselves and felt the liberating relief of meeting and befriending LGBTQ+ people—all things I’ve gone through, too.

I also felt their fear, as if I was experiencing the then-new AIDS epidemic alongside them.

As a gay man who was born in 1996, HIV/AIDS has always felt like ancient history. I didn’t experience it first-hand or live in a society dominated by terror of infection. As far as I know, I’ve never met anyone who has the disease. I wasn’t taught about the epidemic in high school, except for brief references during safe sex education. And even as a university history student, this monumental moment in world history didn’t feature in any of my classes. 

I didn’t even fully realize how catastrophic the AIDS epidemic was until I came out two years ago. I wanted to learn more about the people who had come before me, and pop culture was the easiest place to start. So, I watched Angels in America, The Normal Heart and Rent (and Lindsay Ellis’ video arguing the musical failed to capture the epidemic’s severity) and realized I needed to know more this painful era of LGBTQ+ history. But beyond those iconic examples, there weren’t many movies and TV shows about AIDS. The brave and brilliant protesters I’d come to admire through these films had seen some success; stigma declined, effective medical treatment arrived and by the mid- to late-90s, attention had largely moved elsewhere. With a few exceptions—including Pose and several indie productions, like The Living End, Kids, Pride, Holding the Man and BPM (Beats per Minute)—the stories I was desperate to find just didn’t exist.

That’s a problem. When something devastates a community, it demands remembrance. There should be a complete, rich picture—a detailed narrative with emotional insight from victims, survivors and protesters. When we’re living through a destructive pandemic, it’s essential to remember that this has happened before.

It was also why I was so excited to hear about It’s A Sin. The series was inspired by Davies’ own young adulthood, when he moved to London and enjoyed his newfound freedom by partying and exploring his identity, all while AIDS loomed in the background. It’s also the conclusion of a long reckoning for Davies. He famously refused to let AIDS define the gay characters in his iconic TV series, Queer as Folk. And while another one of his shows, Cucumber, does refer to Margaret Thatcher’s chilling anti-AIDS ad campaign, It’s A Sin is the first time in his prolific career that he’s made AIDS a focal point.

He explained why earlier this year in an essay for the Guardian. “I just keep my head down and let it happen around me. I looked away. Oh, I went on marches and gave a bit of money and said how sad it was, but really, I couldn’t quite look at it. This impossible thing. There are boys whose funerals I didn’t attend. Letters I didn’t write. Parents I didn’t see,” he wrote of the shame he—and many gay men—felt at the time.

Although Davies did write LGBTQ+ characters throughout his career, it would take more than two decades after Queer as Folk ran for him to figure out what he wanted to say about AIDS. But when he did, it was beautiful: “I wanted to create people you love,” he told CNN. “So you could miss them.”

That’s why, while It’s A Sin treats its subjects, especially main characters Ritchie (Olly Alexander), Roscoe (Omari Douglas) and Colin (Callum Scott Howells) with compassion and sensitivity, it doesn’t shy away from the harshest realities of the epidemic.

“The fact that HIV largely affected gay men made it easy for society to turn away,” says John Maxwell, executive director of the AIDS Committee of Toronto. “There were horror stories in the early years of the epidemic where healthcare workers wouldn’t even go into the hospital rooms of people who had HIV/AIDS. They’d leave their food trays outside.”

The first time we see a hospitalized AIDS patient in It’s a Sin, a healthcare worker refuses to enter a patient’s room, instead leaving food outside his door.

Still, the show isn’t only about suffering. It’s also about a community coming together. Chosen families supported each other and fought to survive HIV/AIDS. There’s struggle, but nobody surrenders who they are. I cried my eyes out watching It’s a Sin, but I also felt empowered to live as fiercely and passionately as Ritchie, Roscoe and Colin. 

I hope this show revives interest in the AIDS epidemic, especially for younger people like myself. But we also need to remember that while HIV/AIDS may seem like history, it’s not. Today, 38 million people live with HIV around the world. Just over 62,000 of them live in Canada and most are from marginalized communities (i.e. gay men, people who use drugs, and racialized people). And according to Maxwell, the fact that HIV most often affects marginalized communities explains why it’s so hard to stop the virus. 

“We do have the tools to end HIV in this country today,” he says. “Whether it’s ensuring everyone has access to treatment or testing, or things like PrEP [a medication capable of lowering risk of HIV infection to 99%]. We could end HIV in this country if there was the political will to do so.”  

I think stories can help conjure that will. But we need an expansive perspective if that’s going to happen. White, cisgender gay men are typically the protagonists of movies and TV shows about HIV/AIDS, It’s A Sin included, but stories about BIPOC and trans people also need to be centred—especially right now, when inclusive storytelling can help counter transphobia, like what’s going on in the U.K.

For a long time, I felt guilty I didn’t know enough about my LGBTQ+ ancestors, the people who protested, suffered and sometimes died so I could live without fear of persecution and disease. But now I know that, as a member of the younger generation, it’s my responsibility to seek these stories out—because stories become the first step to remembering, and more importantly, understanding. 

It’s A Sin is streaming now on Amazon Prime.