«It’s a Sin»: the series on the arrival of AIDS in the gay community is a lesson in humanity

Watch the first episode of It’s a Sin it means embarking on a journey that now takes you to the highest plane of heaven, letting you guess that from now on everything will be for the best, and now it throws you into the depths of the abyss, with fear and death that arrive and corrode every thing. We are in London in the 1980sa and three provincial boys, for different reasons, decide to move to the capital not only to follow their dreams, but also to be themselves: all three are, in fact, homosexuals, and all three, for one reason or another, never indulged in the adventures they hoped to live for fear of being discovered, repudiated, pointed out by the community as perverts and, for this reason, marginalized.

But the city is something else. That’s where Ritchie arrives after leaving the small Isle of Wight on which he grew up to make it as an actor and, above all, to indulge in his first sexual adventures: his family believes him to be heterosexual and perfect, spotless and sinless, and he, for fear of disappointing them and to deal with contempt, he decides to keep quiet and to make them believe what suits them to believe. Which, however, Roscoe he didn’t have the chance to do it, since his family was so close to bringing him back to Jamaica to convert him to “normal”. Finally, more reserved and reserved is Colin, who leaves his Welsh mother to face the big city convinced that, by working hard and keeping a low profile, he will be able to carve out his place in the world.

In London the lives of the three boys cross naturally: together with their friends Ash (Nathaniel Curtis) and Jill, a black girl who will be the glue of a good part of the community, they rent an apartment in the heart of the city they call Pink Palace which soon becomes the headquarters of their adventures, their chatter and their confidences. So far it seems to be witnessing a vintage version of Queer as folk – which, not surprisingly, was always created by Russell T Davis, the showrunner of It’s a Sin – but something terrible is about to appear on the horizon. From America comes news of a strange disease that affects homosexuals, a sort of divine punishment on which Ritchie plays down and jokes thinking that it is only a construction created ad hoc by the media to scare them. At the Pink Palace, this disease called AIDS is spoken of sporadically, at most to deride it. At least until some people who are very close to them start showing the first signs of the disease, those strange purple rashes that pop up on the skin and the fever that rises and seems to have no intention of going down. From here It’s a Sin turns from brilliant comedy to priceless drama, ferrying the viewer towards a world that, like ours, has begun to deal with a virus marred by disinformation and fear: weapons that society has used to set up a terrorist campaign in which it was very difficult to understand in what way you could really prevent and fight. The series, which was a smash hit in England on Channel 4 and in the US on HBO Max and that arrives today, June 1st, in Italy on the StarzPlay platform, alternating in a very skilful way the lightness and the drama, it returns a very clear picture of a disturbed community, of a group of people who previously believed themselves invincible and who now spend the night inspecting their bodies to understand if those spots are hiding from some part.

The events narrated cover one time window ranging from 1981 to 1991, letting us watch the life of Ritchie (the English singer Olly Alexander), Colin (Callum Scott Howells) and Roscoe (Omari Douglas) taking measures with fear and the will to live too much, with a healthy way of resisting disease and hysteria and the renunciation of fixed points to which, up to by then, they had clung to survive. Interviewed by VanityFair.it Omari Douglas, who lends his face to Roscue, the most exuberant of the group, confesses via Zoom that he has deepened the picture of the spread of AIDS in the United Kingdom especially during the filming of the series: “I knew the things they teach you at school, but shooting the series it is as if he had turned on a light. I started to be curious, to read up on trying to read as much as possible to understand what actually happened in the Eighties. I tried to identify with a boy of that period, trying to get inside his head and facing his own fears “explains Omari who fears that, in 2021, AIDS is still considered a social stigma. «The thing that struck me most about the statements by Billy Porter, who addressed the issue of AIDS in Pose, it was that he was ashamed and that he waited so long to tell it. It is a reality common to many people, and I believe that any HIV-positive should try to talk about it freely to break this wall ». Besides considering himself lucky to be able to count on a family that has always been close to him – «My uncle is a musician, art has always been the red thread that bound us. From a very young age, when I said I wanted to become an actor, my parents immediately supported me – Douglas does not hide that falling into the eighties was one of the most beautiful things that It’s a Sin gave him the opportunity to do: «It was crazy to experience that period so eccentric and decisive for fashion and music for the first time. The frame is fundamental to understand how the character will move in the story ».

We can’t say much about how the five episodes will develop because the risk of spoilers is around the corner – you just need to know that you will cry a lot, so get ready -, but we can tell you to keep an eye on one character in particular, that of Jill, played by the talented Lydia West. As we wrote earlier, she is the compass that allows kids to It’s a Sin not to get lost; she is the girl who will take their lives to heart trying to fight the AIDS threat as much as possible by trying to decode it, to understand the best way to neutralize it. Jill is the mom Ritchie never could count on, the confidant to whom “Gloria” (David Carlyle) reveals her torments, and the activist the whole homosexual community still needs today. AIDS, after all, was never just a gay problem. The character of Jill, in this sense, represents all the people who, regardless of whether the disease could affect them or not, they fought to ensure that society did not marginalize the sick and did not treat them as animals to be tamed and, then, to be killed (even here we cannot say much, but keep an eye on the story of Neil Patrick Harris, who in the series plays Henry Coltrane, Colin’s mentor). If it is not clear, It’s a Sin it is not a series for the faint of heart and easily suggestible people: however, is one of the most powerful and successful stories about homosexuality, the spread of AIDS and the prejudices that, after forty years, continue to affect the community and on a disease of which many young people ignore the fundamentals. Looking at it could be a good way, as well as to rediscover a humanity that we really need, also to read up to avoid making the same mistakes. Even if you use up all the tissues you have at home, go to StarzPlay and get it back – it’s worth it.