“That’s what people will forget. That it was so much fun.” Despite the sadness of It’s A Sin and its subject matter, this is what the show’s creator, Russell T Davies is sure to remind us of by the end of it. That through the death and the uncertainty wrought by AIDS throughout the gay community in the 1980s, there was still a sense of fun (the kind which can only come with reckless abandon, loss of inhibition) that permeated the despair while sweated out on the dance floor of some dive.
It’s A Sin, being a British affair, very obviously borrows from the too often underrated Pet Shop Boys song of the same name, the lyrics of which are used to set the tone for a little known book called She’s Lost Control. Those words are, “When I look back upon my life, it’s always with a sense of shame.” This is, indeed, the reality so many gay men of the era had to live with. The shame and the guilt indoctrinated into them by their stodgy parents. And each of the characters of It’s A Sin has them. Starting with Ritchie Tozer (Olly Alexander), who comes from the Isle of Wight (though it might as well be spelled Isle of White). He serves as the anchor of the narrative upon his departure from that limiting place.
Very much like one of his future roommates, Colin Morris-Jones (Callum Scott Howells), who arrives from Wales to make it in the big city, Ritchie has come to London not only for his college education, but for his sexual awakening. Forced into a life of repression for the past eighteen years, he’s quick to toss the pack of condoms his father, Clive (Shaun Dooley), passes along to him on the ferry. Ritchie won’t be needing them, not only because he’s not going to have sex with women, but because barebacking with men just feels so much better.
It’s telling that the story should commence with Ritchie at his last supper before fleeing to London, informing his family that, “Back in the 1800s women had so little standing in society, that if a woman murdered someone, they could arrest her husband. Like it was his fault. ‘Cause they considered that in law she was literally incapable. They thought women had no capacity for morals, or common sense, or anything, which meant the husband was responsible for everything she did.” This, clearly, is a foil for how gay men are regarded in the present (1981). As less than a person. Which is why they’re treated as such when they start to drop like flies, with no official entity even raising an eyebrow on the matter. Despite the grimness of that portrait of women in the 1800s, his mother, Valerie (Keeley Hawes), seems amenable to Ritchie “bringing back” the archaic law so she might be able to do whatever she wants without accountability. Which should say something about her quaint ideas.
“He’s leaving home to buckle down and work hard,” Clive declares as he assumes Ritchie is serious about studying law at school, when, ultimately, he’s just trying to find some fucking freedom. And the only way to do that is to be out from underneath the oppressive thumb of his parents, who willfully ignore all the telltale signs of his true identity. The accoutrements of which have been stuffed into his closet for the majority of his adolescence. And as he clears it out, lest Valerie discover it all in his absence, the tune of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s “Enola Gay” plays in the background. A song about an atomic bomb feels fitting for the detonation of AIDS that’s about to be unleashed at the same time as Ritchie’s unbridled sexuality.
Roscoe Babatunde (Omari Douglas), who already lives in London without enjoying the full gay benefits, has decided to no longer repress himself either. Coming from a strict Nigerian family, Roscoe’s final straw is when they try to conduct some absurd prayer ritual to help God cast the devil out of him, or whatever. His sister, Solly (Shaniqua Okwok), is the one to remind him that if he allows them to take him back to Nigeria for a full-stop “cleansing,” he will surely be killed. She gives him all the money she has to make a fresh start as the person he really is.
It takes Jill Baxter (Lydia West), a drama and English major at Ritchie’s school, to finally draw “Rachel” Tozer out. The queeny, unabashed gay he was always meant to be. Catching Ritchie eyeballing Ash Mukherjee (Nathaniel Curtis) in their drama class, she scurries over to him to assure he’s “a bender” like Ritchie. Still so used to suppressing his identity, he insists he isn’t gay. It takes until that night for Ritchie to admit, at the very least, he’s bisexual. Soon after, he’s getting his cherry popped by Ash.
In the meantime, Colin has secured an apprenticeship in a tailor shop, where he soon finds the old man who runs it is a lecher with a fetish for young boys… and trying to clean them. Luckily, a fellow employee at the establishment, Henry Coltrane (Neil Patrick Harris), rescues Colin from a foul after hours fate. He then takes Colin under his wing, allowing him to be more open about who he is by, in turn, showing his own life as a relatively “free” gay man. After all, he lives with his longtime partner, Juan Pablo (Tatsu Carvalho), who takes Colin in for dinner like a fellow adoptive parent. Granted, of all the parents in the show, it is Colin’s mother, Eileen (Andria Doherty)–whose name later becomes rife for Jill to say, “Come on, Eileen”–that is the most accepting. The most shrugging of what Colin “is.” Which is why it’s so ironic that Colin is the most discreet and virginal out of everyone in the friend group. And why his form of AIDS being the most degenerative is such a particularly cruel fate.
What’s more, Colin was among the first of Ash, Ritchie, Roscoe and Jill to witness what the disease was capable of when it took Henry’s life. And yet, not knowing it had a name or a gay stigma attached to it, it is ultimately Ash reading an article at the end of the first episode entitled, “Concern Over Mystery Illness” that leads us into the time jump of 1983.
But before that, a heart-wrenching montage of Colin, Ritchie and Roscoe each telling some form of employer what they want for their future drives home the bittersweet point that it’s entirely possible these men won’t have any future at all. And naturally, episode one concludes with the unspoken gay anthem that is Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy.” For so many gay men who fled their provincial towns for London in the 80s, this was, quite literally, a prototypical autobiography.
As the phobia about AIDS begins to intensify, so, too, does Ritchie’s sense of denial. In fact, the more he’s presented with the stories of those who have died, the more he’s convinced it’s an elaborate hoax to keep gay men from fucking freely. And indeed, considering the contempt for the homosexual community for so long before it was commodified by the straight world, it’s understandable how a gay man of this time might believe it was nothing more than a conspiracy designed to scare them straight.
Colin is already scared enough in general without any such tactics. Being told he’s expected to go to New York, an AIDS epicenter, with his boss, however, certainly doesn’t put his nerves at ease. Jill, however, sees it as an opportunity for him to pick up some much needed literature on the subject, stating of the UK’s lack of response, “There are boys dying all over the world from sex. And I wanna know why. But no one knows, Colin. No one really knows. No one knows anything. And there’s nothing in the library. There’s nothing on TV. There’s nothing in this entire country. There’s no information anywhere. We’ve got this great, big killer disease and it’s happening in silence.” A true assessment if ever there was one.
Accelerating to March 1986 by episode three, Ritchie is in full-tilt auditioning mode while Jill has found steady work in a satirical musical about the French Revolution. Colin’s job at a copy and fax shop is in full swing by now, and he’s given “more responsibility” by his boss via the “privilege” of a key to open the store. Not exactly a raise or a bump in title, but Colin, sweet-natured boy that he is, remains thrilled nonetheless. Tragically, it is on this first day of opening the store that he goes into an epileptic shock triggered by none other than…AIDS. As arguably the most upsetting episode, it’s only fitting for it to conclude with Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever,” released in June of 1986 for the Highlander Soundtrack. Although the song might have been bequeathed to the narrative of a straight couple, considering Freddie Mercury’s background, there’s no denying the AIDS-drenched motif of the doleful song. The soundtrack, of course, is like an additional character itself. And it is completely on point–though one has to wonder why the only trace of Madonna doesn’t come in auditory form, but in a lesser known small photo on the wall of Ritchie’s room in 1991 (rather than the 80s, when it would have been more apropos). Specifically the one featured on a 1984 cover of i-D magazine (a British publication before Vice helped disseminate it to hipsters).
By episode four, which begins in March of 1988, the BBC has finally gotten around to airing a special on the disease. Ritchie and his crew watch intently, contrasted by a cross-cut to his parents barely registering what’s being shown to them as the voiceover poignantly remarks, “If you ignore AIDS, it could be the death of you, so don’t die of ignorance.” For Ritchie’s parents, however, ignorance has always been bliss. Ritchie, alas, can no longer ignore what’s happening to him, trying every cockamamie method of evasion–even going so far as to ponder a “battery acid remedy.” More resigned to his fate than ever as the symptoms become increasingly pronounced, he goes home to the Isle of Wight to confess his love to a straight high school crush. Going to the bar where the bloke in question works, Ritchie puts on “It’s A Sin,” released in June of 1987 to much shock and outrage from the Catholic Church (they had no idea it would be nothing compared to “Like A Prayer”).
In the final scenes of the episode, one of the most upsetting/camp/incongruous images comes into play: the police in their “butch” getups wearing white latex gloves–giving them a look more associated with the “womanish” practice of washing dishes. They’ve donned them to avoid “contamination” while responding to a peaceful protest inspired by the ACT UP demonstrations in U.S. cities like San Francisco and New York. With Jill, Ash and Roscoe all lying on the ground in an imitation of corpses like the rest of the protesters, the police proceed to pick them up, brutalize them and throw them into the back of the van. Ritchie shows up in the nick of time to spare Jill from being overly abused. With blood on Ritchie’s face, Ash tries to touch him but he shouts with vehemence that he cannot. The secret about Ritchie’s diagnosis is, therefore, out.
The concluding episode, rounding out a perfectly structured narrative, is the coup de grâce in ways both literal and metaphorical. Davies unfurls the complexity of and damage caused by denial. Namely, in the parents of these gay men who suffered so greatly for the risk they took in coming out. Only to die in the end alone, with no one at their side. Even Ritchie’s own mother, despite being in the house with him, is not at his side the way Jill would have been. Valerie, instead jealous and looking for someone else to blame, keeps Jill and the rest of Ritchie’s remaining friends away from him upon taking him back to the Isle of Wight.
Jill and Roscoe hop the ferry there, where they wait day after day at a hotel in order for Valerie to “anoint” them. To allow them entry into the house so they can at least say one final goodbye to their best friend. Valerie is merciless, even when Ritchie expressly asks for Jill. When she finally does agree to meet Jill, it is only to inform her that Ritchie died. Again, with nobody at his bedside. Having been patient with Valerie all this time, even when Jill is accused by her of somehow being at fault for everything (in truth, Jill is every family member’s punching bag for some reason), she can take it no more. Thus, she finally lays into Valerie with the cold, hard reality,
All of this is your fault… Right from the start. ‘Cause I don’t know what happened to you to make that house so loveless, but that’s why Ritchie grew up so ashamed of himself. And then he killed people. He was ashamed and he kept on being ashamed. He kept the shame going by having sex with men and infecting them and then running away. ‘Cause that’s what shame does, Valerie. It makes him think he deserves it. There are wards full of men who think they deserve it. They are dying, and a little bit of them thinks, ‘Yes, this is right. I brought this on myself, it’s my fault because the sex that I love is killing me.’ I mean, it’s astonishing. The perfect virus came along to prove you right. So that’s what happened, in your house.
And in the stifled houses of so many not just in Britain, but the world over. That’s what It’s A Sin aims to highlight in between the one-line manifesto of Ritchie: “it was so much fun.” Fucking those boys. Losing oneself in the night. Through the extreme lows of the show, Davies does not want his viewer to discount that. Even if he concludes the final episode with R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts.” But even there, one can read between the lines, for Michael Stipe is a self-described “equal opportunity lech.”
