It’s A Sin - Russel T Davis CH4

A difficult watch as expected.

As sad as the Ritchie scenes were it was the moments when Jill sat with the ones abandoned by their loved ones that had the greatest impact on me only equalled by the ending of the Inheritance Pt1.


As a contemporary of this period it amazes me that this pandemic was more or less invisible to me, the adverts had an impact but the true depths of the issue were kept out of the public domain, as a heterosexual engineering graduate with a passion for metal it was a world that passed me by, there were gay pubs in Nottingham but my life was spent in the rock pubs and rock discos which were ironically male dominated but as far from hedonism as you could get.

It’s been interesting watching American reactions to the series. I’ve seen the odd eye-rolling one (‘this series doesn’t cover the American AIDS experience!’) and the odd one that seemed to think it was meant to be a survey of the entire AIDS crisis rather than a drama about one group of friends going through it (‘it doesn’t cover the trans, straight women, or sub-Saharan African experience!’) which I guess is to be expected because there’s so few TV shows on the topic that the ones that exist are expected to represent everything.

(On a side note: I saw RTD asked about the lack of diversity in Queer As Folk in an interview recently, and he absolutely held up his hand and said it was lacking and that he has strived to do better ever since. Which is the right thing to do. But then the interviewer followed up with ‘it was based on your experience of gay life - did you actually have friends from diverse backgrounds at the time?’’ and he said well, err, no, he went from Wales to Oxford University to a job in TV....)

Listened to the Vanity Fair ‘Still Watching’ podcast on the show this morning and was quite surprised about their comments on the theme of shame. Basically one of the hosts was really rejecting the idea that the characters in the show displayed any shame because of the amount of fun and sex they are shown to be having, and disputed that shame and closeting was shown to have any effect on their behaviour.
They really didn’t like that big Jill speech about the effect of shame.

I don’t know if this is an American-British cultural divide or an age thing (I checked and he’s my age, so he would have been under 10 in 1991 when the series ended), or if it’s just a personal resistance to the idea of shame being part of the gay experience. Maybe you had to live through the effect of Section 28 and the tabloid press monstering gay people and AIDS victims to understand the shaming culture and how it affected people?

Thoughts?

I recall the lead-up to Freddie Mercury dying in 1991 creating a huge amount of shaming tabloid coverage. It was an absolute feeding frenzy. It was formative for me because I was old enough at that point to get myself out of bed, pick the newspaper off the doormat in the morning and read it with my breakfast, before my parents were up.

I was in secondary school at the time Section 28 was in force, and I'm pretty sure we were all aware of it as a thing.

There's a good Q and A with Russell Tovey and the cast here:

I completely don't understand their viewpoint. Just because Ritchie had a lot of sex and fun doesn't mean he didn't feel shame - he literally killed people because he was too ashamed to find out his HIV status or tell people he was positive once he did know. And I think the amount of sex was sort of a result of the shaming he and so many are made to feel and why gay culture is so associated with hook-up culture even now - because gay people are so ashamed and in the closet throughout their teens, many don't go through the normal adolescent, experimental period when it comes to sex and dating a lot of the time so it all kind of happens at once in their late teens/early twenties when they're finally free from their home lives in which they were so repressed.

Jill's speech was fully justified in that moment. She had been robbed of saying goodbye to her closest friend by a woman who was being spiteful.

Of course Jill wanted to lash out and hurt. Anyone in that situation would feel the same.

Of course this is a drama and so it was heightened for effect. But the central point about shame driving people to act against their own best interests and the interests of those around them was (and still is) a valid one. Not for everyone but for some.

Some people behave recklessly because they don't feel they deserve better. So they put themselves at risk because they feel worthless. Or they don't feel strong enough to stand up for themselves and agree to things they would not do if they had more self worth.

Jill was trying to hurt Valerie. And the reason it cut so deep is because there was a lot of truth to it.

It’s funny that none of the people I have seen complain have actually engaged meaningfully with the Roscoe or Ash characters in their criticism. Very little discussion of the Nigerian family dynamic shown - and Roscoe ends up being much closer to his family than Ritchie is, despite his initial dramatic exit.

I think it works well enough as it was broadcast. That 10 year period worked as strong framework for the action.

Perhaps there is a case for a one off episode at some point to catch up with the characters in later life. But I don't feel the need. It isn't a perfect piece of work but it is good enough not to need further elaboration.

Did anyone see the reaction to the final episode on Gogglebox last night? Most of them watching were in tears.

It's worth watching the last 10 on Catch-up just to see it.

Just bumping this in case anyone is interested 🙂

His friends didn't know he was HIV+ until he told them - they didn't aid and abet. After he accepted it, he didn't carry on infecting others, if he had infected anyone at all.

Your link to a news article didn't work for me, so I'm not sure how old it is, but there is a distinct difference between the start of people becoming aware of HIV and AIDS, and more recent cases where someone puts others knowingly at/in danger, with the knowledge there is about it now.

Ritchie contemplated drinking battery acid, because he heard it might prevent/cure HIV, there is a whole section where he tries or contemplates allsorts of weird stuff.

I'm not saying he was right, but he didn't understand what he was dealing with exactly in that era. They even said to each other at the start something along the lines of 'It's only in LA, it won't get here.'.

For those who didn't see the Brit's attached is Elton and Olly singing It's A Sin.

It can be downloaded for Elton's Charity too.