It's a Sin (TV Series)
Aug. 6th, 2021 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI have to say, RTD's post Doctor Who career is a superb one where the last few years is concerned. The five part miniseries It's a sin which I've just finished is the third in a row - after Years and Years and A Very English Scandal - where I feel like doffing my non existant hat at the sheer vitality of characters and masterfulness of storytelling. By which I don't mean you can't nitpick - of course you can - but that this series was the first visual media in a good while where I found myself utterly incapable of as much as check my emails or do anything else but be glued to the screen for all the hours of its run. Because he made me care, because I did not want to miss a moment of what was going on in the lives of the main characters.
Now, if you've read anything about It's A Sin already, you'll know it tackles the AIDS decade (the series starts 1981, ends 1989) full on. The four main characters - Ritchie, Roscoe, Colin and their friend Jill - as well as the supporting cast show the effect of AIDS on the gay community. And Davies gets to use his strengths as a storyteller - the ability to do comedy and tragedy at the same time, to get across joy, to write both found and bio family dynamics - to the max. There are inevitable contemporary echoes - the uncertainty and initial lack of information of how to deal with this new illness, or even what kind of illness it is, the completely inadequate government response, but also denial as a response on the parts of some of the people in danger. There are specific 1980s issues, not least the far more obvious homophobia and the way gay partners had no legal rights as opposed to the biological families, but also the unabashed polyamorous hedonism about to come to a crashing halt, the need for American print media as a way to get information.
There are any number of obvious trapfalls with a story like this. I thought RTD manages to avoid most of them; for example, the idea of the virus as a moral judgment. (There are several promiscous characters as well as characters who only had sex with one partner. By the storytelling choice as to who lives and who dies - this isn't a spoiler, it's a series with AIDS as a main subject, of course only part of the cast will survive -, it's made very clear the virus doesn't care.) Or the temptation of a first half all joy, second half all tragedy. This also does not happen. One of the appeals of the miniseries is that it somehow manages to keep its characters' capacity to be happy whenever they get the chance despite the increasing death score around them. And he keeps up the wit (as well as the occasional toilet humor, from a rimming gone wrong in the opening episode to Roscoe's retaliation when it becomes clear to him just how the Tory politician he has sex with really sees him).
Not that you don't get your heart ripped out as the story proceeds. But not in a gratitious angst way. (And RTD could fall into that particular pit in the past, as we all know.) The overall story is also an ode to the power of friendship, of the activism and caring that develops in response to the terror.
Lastly: the actors are all great. Lydia West, who plays Jill, I'd seen in Years and Years, but the three main young men were all new to me. (Olly Alexander, Omari Douglas and Collum Scott Howells, respectively, as well as Nathaniel Curtis as Ash Mukherjee who is the fifth Beatle, so to speak.) Neil Patrick Harris and Stephen Fry get short but important appearances. I kept wondering why Davies cast a powerhouse like Keeley Hawes as Richie's mother, seeing her as a bit wasted in the part, until the last episode in which it became abundantly clear why it had to be her.
Trivia: Here's a check list to cross out when you're watching an RTD production which applies to this one:
- an important character is Welsh
- someone has the last name Jones or Tyler (only the first one in this case)
- "Tainted Love" makes it onto the soundtrack
- while there are requited love affairs, at least one important character pines for another important character unrequitedly for a while (NOT the fantastic female main character in this case, THANK GOD)
- dig at Margaret Thatcher somewhere
- Manchester is involved and/or a main location (in this case: filming location, though the story itself takes place in London)
- Doctor Who mention! (our Mr. Davies apparently got the license to use a Dalek; since one of the characters, Ritchie, is an actor in the 1980s, he gets a bit part on Old Who)
- family arguments & family reconciliations (not necessarily the same families)
- several key scenes take place in a kitchen
- powerful coming out scene (several, in fact, but given the main subject, that's inevitable).
Now, if you've read anything about It's A Sin already, you'll know it tackles the AIDS decade (the series starts 1981, ends 1989) full on. The four main characters - Ritchie, Roscoe, Colin and their friend Jill - as well as the supporting cast show the effect of AIDS on the gay community. And Davies gets to use his strengths as a storyteller - the ability to do comedy and tragedy at the same time, to get across joy, to write both found and bio family dynamics - to the max. There are inevitable contemporary echoes - the uncertainty and initial lack of information of how to deal with this new illness, or even what kind of illness it is, the completely inadequate government response, but also denial as a response on the parts of some of the people in danger. There are specific 1980s issues, not least the far more obvious homophobia and the way gay partners had no legal rights as opposed to the biological families, but also the unabashed polyamorous hedonism about to come to a crashing halt, the need for American print media as a way to get information.
There are any number of obvious trapfalls with a story like this. I thought RTD manages to avoid most of them; for example, the idea of the virus as a moral judgment. (There are several promiscous characters as well as characters who only had sex with one partner. By the storytelling choice as to who lives and who dies - this isn't a spoiler, it's a series with AIDS as a main subject, of course only part of the cast will survive -, it's made very clear the virus doesn't care.) Or the temptation of a first half all joy, second half all tragedy. This also does not happen. One of the appeals of the miniseries is that it somehow manages to keep its characters' capacity to be happy whenever they get the chance despite the increasing death score around them. And he keeps up the wit (as well as the occasional toilet humor, from a rimming gone wrong in the opening episode to Roscoe's retaliation when it becomes clear to him just how the Tory politician he has sex with really sees him).
Not that you don't get your heart ripped out as the story proceeds. But not in a gratitious angst way. (And RTD could fall into that particular pit in the past, as we all know.) The overall story is also an ode to the power of friendship, of the activism and caring that develops in response to the terror.
Lastly: the actors are all great. Lydia West, who plays Jill, I'd seen in Years and Years, but the three main young men were all new to me. (Olly Alexander, Omari Douglas and Collum Scott Howells, respectively, as well as Nathaniel Curtis as Ash Mukherjee who is the fifth Beatle, so to speak.) Neil Patrick Harris and Stephen Fry get short but important appearances. I kept wondering why Davies cast a powerhouse like Keeley Hawes as Richie's mother, seeing her as a bit wasted in the part, until the last episode in which it became abundantly clear why it had to be her.
Trivia: Here's a check list to cross out when you're watching an RTD production which applies to this one:
- an important character is Welsh
- someone has the last name Jones or Tyler (only the first one in this case)
- "Tainted Love" makes it onto the soundtrack
- while there are requited love affairs, at least one important character pines for another important character unrequitedly for a while (NOT the fantastic female main character in this case, THANK GOD)
- dig at Margaret Thatcher somewhere
- Manchester is involved and/or a main location (in this case: filming location, though the story itself takes place in London)
- Doctor Who mention! (our Mr. Davies apparently got the license to use a Dalek; since one of the characters, Ritchie, is an actor in the 1980s, he gets a bit part on Old Who)
- family arguments & family reconciliations (not necessarily the same families)
- several key scenes take place in a kitchen
- powerful coming out scene (several, in fact, but given the main subject, that's inevitable).
no subject
Date: 2021-08-06 05:21 pm (UTC)That's delightful.(I had heard very good things about the rest of the series, but no one had yet mentioned this detail.)
no subject
Date: 2021-08-06 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-07 05:16 pm (UTC)But his initials suggest that, like Rose Tyler, there's a dash of Mary Sue for our Russell T. included.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-08 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-06 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-07 11:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-08 02:48 pm (UTC)