TV Review - It's a Sin

Nearly 20 years ago, HBO produced the Emmy-winning series Angels in America (2003), which was based on Tony Kushner's Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play about gay men dealing with HIV and AIDS in the 1980's. The series was set in New York City and obviously the United States. It's difficult for anything coming in the wake of Kushner's classic and highly-acclaimed work to also tackle that topic but this one does. Created and written by Russell T. Davis (Torchwood and Queer As Folk), this series does several things, three things in particular. It brings the HIV/AIDS issue to Millennials who haven't seen Angels in America. It also provides this issue's perspective from across the pond in the United Kingdom. While there is of course a lot of the same in the UK perspective as the U.S. perspective, there are differences for sure. Finally, it provides an interesting comparison and metaphor to how people and governments are dealing with COVID-19, both in the past year and now.

Olly Alexander (The Dish & the Spoon and Bright Star) stars as Ritchie Tozer, an aspiring actor from the Isle of Wight who moves to London to pursue acting in 1981. He enters the gay nightlife. He befriends a diverse group of people, mostly other gay men. He moves into an apartment with them and tries to live as best a life as he can, partying and having as much sex as possible. He embraces this fun-loving life, as he tries to ignore the growing concerns about the HIV and AIDS epidemic.

Lydia West (Years and Years and Dracula) co-stars as Jill Baxter, a young Black woman who is one of the people that Ritchie befriends. She's also an aspiring actor. She mainly works in the theatre. When a friend of hers gets sick with AIDS, she does what she can to help him. Her being a kind of nurse to him fuels her curiosity about the disease and eventually her advocacy and just sheer empathy to help gay men who are dying. She's actually the opposite of Ritchie who is in denial about the disease. She's all for doing what she can to fight it or at least protect people from it, if only by educating them.

The dichotomy between Ritchie and Jill might be analogous to the dichotomy or absolute divide in places like the United States when it comes to COVID-19 or the coronavirus. From the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. and even till today, there are those that want to ignore, deny or simply dismiss the danger of the disease. At the same time, there are of course those who take it deathly serious.

Omari Douglas also co-stars as Roscoe Babatunde, a young Black gay man whose parents are Nigerian immigrants. He along with several others deal with homophobia from his family. Roscoe's parents certainly don't approve of his cross-dressing or drag. They certainly don't approve of his same-sex attraction. He's on the far end of young gay men who push back against that homophobia when he can. He's an example of someone who stands up to the stifling and repressive nature that most parents perpetuate.

Ritchie though is one that might be open and sometimes flamboyant in his personal life with his friends. However, he's very much stifled and repressed in his professional life and certainly when around his parents. There are then those who are in the middle of that spectrum like Colin, played by Callum Scott Howells, in his screen debut. Colin's mother is very supportive of him. However, because of the homophobic culture at large, it still stifles and represses him in various ways. In a lot of ways, that's the overall theme of Davis' series. His theme is that homophobia killed a lot of gay men or contributed to the deaths of gay men more than the actual disease did.

Neil Patrick Harris (A Series of Unfortunate Events and How I Met Your Mother) plays Henry Coltrane, a tailor and fashion designer who befriends Colin. Henry is an older guy who becomes a mentor or kind of father-figure shepherding him into gay culture in London. His performance is a great one to anchor the series in the beginning. He's funny, charming and eventually heartbreaking. He also sets the expectation from the very beginning that this series will pull at your heartstrings. It's a very powerful and emotional series that is very incredible. One of the best I've seen so far!

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 5 eps.

Available on HBO Max.