It’s a Sin
In London, Richtie (Olly Alexander) only wants one thing: to enjoy his life as a gay man.
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It’s a Sin
Because his parents want to “cure” him of his homosexuality, Roscoe (Omari Douglas) leaves his family.
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It’s a Sin
In 1981, Richtie (Olly Alexander) left the Isle of Wight to start a new life in London.
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It’s a Sin
Years & Years singer Olly Alexander plays the young Richtie, who came to London to study, with great charm.
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It’s a Sin
“It’s a Sin” celebrates gay life – in the midst of the emerging AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
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5/5 SLIDES
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The most shocking, touching and probably best series of the year: “It’s a Sin” tells of death and celebrates life.
People who die alone because their relatives are not allowed to stay with them: Those were perhaps the most harrowing images of the corona pandemic. It’s a painful reminder to watch “It’s a Sin” (June 20th on Starzplay), a five-part British series that is among the best television has made in a long time. The camera moves along long hospital corridors, and in every room there is a person marked by illness, near death, and many of them are completely alone. Because their relatives have rejected them, because ignorant doctors consider their patients to be contagious, because the sick are ashamed of themselves for who they are and for what they are suffering from: It is gay men who perish from AIDS, who die, because society despises them.
“It’s a Sin” tells of five friends who met for the first time in 1981 in London. For more than ten years series producer Russell T Davies (“Queer as Folk”, “Doctor Who”) traces the life, suffering and death of his protagonists, relentlessly, but full of love and so heartbreaking that in the end you sit in front of the television in tears .
The center of the Freundeskreis is Ritchie, played with an incredible amount of charm by Years & Years singer Olly Alexander. Richtie is from the Isle of Wight and is coming to London to study. But above all, he wants to finally live far away from his family. And for him that means: living gay, relaxed and free.
Living in the midst of the disaster
1981 is also the year in which a previously unknown disease was first described in five gay men in the United States. In London, of course, no one knows anything about it. Ritchie goes out partying, has sex and meets his best friends: Nathaniel (Ash Mukherjee), who becomes his lover, Roscoe (Omari Douglas), whose Nigerian family rejected him, the good Colin (Callum Scott Howells), who in who learns Savile Row from a bespoke tailor, and Jill (Lydia West), the good soul who holds everything together.
At some point, however, the “gay flu from San Francisco” will also reach old Europe, and while the first activists are warning that one must protect oneself, Richtie and his friends carry on as before. They do not want to be deprived of the freedom that their life in the big city offers them. But at some point, the series arrived long in the mid-80s, the virus hits them too.
Amid all the suffering, rejection and despair, “It’s a Sin” is above all a celebration of life, of gay life in all its facets. Russell T Davies, who processes his own experiences in his series, lets his protagonists shine, shows being gay in all its beauty, with all depths, but also infinitely high heights.
“It’s a Sin” is not a series about an illness, but about the people who just wanted to live in the midst of the catastrophe, and all of this is told so incredibly touching that it takes your breath away. There is hardly a better series this year.
Trailer for “It’s a Sin”: This is probably the best series of the year
Trailer for It’s a Sin: This is arguably the best series of the year
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© Starzplay
It’s a Sin
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