To feel like the character of Jill in It's A Sin was really underdeveloped? ***Spoiler alert - added by MNHQ***

[Draineddraineddrained]

Just binged this show with DP over last couple of evenings and LOVED it (heartbreaking though it was) - but this just got to me...

I mean I don't find it unrealistic that a (presumably?) straight girl would be best friends with a group of gay men and become a huge advocate for them and an AIDS activist - my mum did similar back in the 80s, and I wish like anything she was still alive because she would have thought this show was amazing.

But she was also a full human being with her own life, relationships (mostly dire), failings and priorities - whereas Jill just seems like a sort of motherly cipher, there to hold everyone else together without any normal human feelings beyond extreme empathy and compassion. She feels like a fantasy of what a woman should be to men - completely supportive, undemanding, cares more for them than they do for themselves.

The horrible scene in the last episode where Ritchie's mum rips into her for having no life of her own - it was horrible but I couldn't help but think she had s point and was hoping that some "real" Jill might emerge as a result of this challenge - but no, she just continued to live her life for Ritchie and the other men in the show, even finding strangers to devote her compassion to.

Anyone else just find it really disappointing? I mean the story (clearly) is about gay men and what they went through during the height of the aids crisis. And that is an important story told with beauty and sensitivity. But why include a female character in that, ostensibly as a lead character, just to utterly marginalise and charicature her?

YABU: Jill's a great character/she's not what matters in this show

YANBU: She should have been done right or not at all.

You should put a spoiler alert in your title

Oh come on. You'd have to be pretty dim not to realise the thread would be reflecting on the content of the show

Yep, she wasn't great, was she?

I think the Welsh mum was great and felt plausible, but Richie's mum was also shit. It kind of annoys me that they cast Keeley Hawes and then did her up in frumpy older-woman clothes.

I think you make a very valid point.
Either the wider story ended up on the cutting room floor or the author struggled to envisage the full rounded character (as you say).

It was excellent though. I think she was really a metaphor for 'normal'. DH & I dreaded our expected outcome that she would be the last man standing. All very very sad.

I heard an interview from the "Real Jill" on R4 and there was so much more to her life than default support human. I thought it said more about how some men see women - totally superfluous to requirements unless they want something from them. But the script would have been approved, the production was happy, the director directed it - why did no one say "what about Jill?" at any point in the process?

I think the show could have done with another 2-3 episodes and then we could have seen more character development for Jill, or maybe a few other backgrounds (Like Ash's too as not sure his was mentioned much).

I’ve got to disagree. Jill is the character who fights for her friends when they have no one else. Jill battles to get them legal representation. Jill works to educate where others just judge.

I think for many people, especially younger people, the perception is that gay man fought back in this face of the AIDS crisis to get it and them noticed. We need to understand how much the gay community needed straight allies like Jill. It’s also important to show that not only straight people ignored AIDS until they started getting it.

Oh, I agree it's good to show that straight women were involved, I get that.

But that's not about her character, is it? That's about her role in the show. She didn't really get to have a character, just a function.

Why does she need a boyfriend or girlfriend so badly? Why is having a SO the be all and end all in life anyway? None of the 'boys' had a properly actualised life or love life either. Difference is many of them died and never got the chance to find out who they became later on. These characters are meant to be 30ish even at the end. Plenty of people are not fulfilled in every area of their life at 30. Some people never have a great romantic love. It's a sin to me was about all different kinds of love. The mother's conditional maternal love, Jills unconditional love and compassion, the 'boys' sexual love, but deep friendship being a stronger love, etc.

I'm not sure giving Jill a boyfriend or girlfriend would have added anything, and RTD has explained why he didn't because he was limited for amount of screen time, and the story he wanted to tell was about HIV/AIDS and the gay men effected by it.

I thought Richie's mum was strange - one minute she was just clueless housewifey mum stereotype then as soon as she discovered he was ill she turned into the bitch from hell. Strange the way the dad was presented as the rigid bigoted one until then and then flipped over into reading Watership Down and weeping at just the point he would have been more likely to become a total bastard.

Agree Colin's mum was perfect. As was Colin 😭 I get way to invested in characters in TV shows and decided Colin was the "safe" one to like because as far as we knew he was a virgin - which is of course exactly what the writer planned when they gut punched us with his diagnosis and rapid decline, to remind us that no-one was "safe". Brilliant writing but so so brutally sad.

@StillCoughingandLaughing, is it, though?

I think some lesbians also find it quite hard to think about straight men as very interesting, too.

OP YANBU, I felt exactly the same as you but you’ve managed to put it into words so much better than I could have.
Women turning on women is exactly what the patriarchy want meanwhile we’re all running around after them!

Re spoilers - I would always think that if I read a thread about something it could contain spoilers.

However, although it’s all available on All4, it is being broadcast in the traditional way, one episode a week, and so far it’s only up to episode 3, so I do actually think it is unreasonable to post details of the final episode without a spoiler alert, as you have spoiled some details for people who are watching as it is broadcast.

There are quite a few threads about this ,but I think the show was about Aids and the affect it had on Gay ment at the time,it wasent really about Jill's story , incidentally the real Jill played Jill's mum in the show .

Gay men*

@AubergineDream

It's not that she needs an SO to make her "real" - that's just one potential facet of her own personal life I suggested that would have made her anything other than a foil to the male characters. I also thought there might be some mileage in her being desperately in love with Richie all along - or that her background was difficult somehow giving her a sort of "service" mentality - just because it's very rare for anyone to go from uni to 30 without ever exhibiting any emotion that isn't entirely selfless. All we see of her beyond her relationship with the guyd is she has a role in the chorus of a play and stereotypically perfect parenrs. Literally nothing else.

[quote SarahAndQuack]@StillCoughingandLaughing, is it, though?

I think some lesbians also find it quite hard to think about straight men as very interesting, too.[/quote]
There’s a very clear difference between not being particularly interested and not thinking of them as human.

But I suspect you didn’t need me to tell you that.

But even if the show was about the effect on gay men, they didn't have to make Jill such a bland saint. Colin's mum was a great character who had a much tinier amount of screen time, but came across really convincingly as a person. I think Jill partly didn't work because she was made to be every single gay man's straight female bestie.

@StillCoughingandLaughing, I guess what I mean is, if you spend your whole life very cocooned in your own gender, you can be oblivious to the other gender and sort of not notice what makes them people. I probably could have put it better, but it is easy to do.

@x2boys ooh I didn't know that re the "real Jill"! I'd love to read about her.

As I say my mum worked in GUM clinics in the 80s so was very live to the issue earlier than a lot of people, she was also bi and very liberal so had a lot of gay male friends, went on the marches, fundraised etc - so I don't find Jill's supportive role unrealistic. It's just beyond that she's a bit "nothing" - which again would be fine if she was just an incidental character stuffing envelopes or answering support lines, but she's so central, which leaves a sort of vacuum where her reality should be. And yeah same with Ash actually, he's not really fully articulated. I suppose there's only so much you can do with 5 episodes and such a big cast. Much may have been left on the cutting room floor!

I so agree! She was a Handmaidly cipher and I’d have loved to see her more developed. Interesting that real Jill played her mother and is a friend of RTD, just felt frustrated at the development of her as a character

I mean throwing my mind way back (and showing me age!) Nathan's best friend Donna in Queer As Folk was a bit similar in that it felt like her whole role was to be supportive to Nathan - but at least she did give him a bit of a bollocking at one point for being so self absorbed (also providing me with one of my favourite phrases - "me? I could be bleeding from the eyes!").

And you had the AMAZING Vince's mum providing an alternative view of a supportive straight woman with an actual personality for balance (probably helped she was that bit older).

I think possibly the show would have been better without her, or with her a bit more "off to one side", because by putting her in the middle and then making her so bland and saintly I think it raises the question and distracts from the story they were actually trying to tell.

YABU I totally disagree.
Jill was one of my favourite characters. She was so strong and caring, even in the very beginning when she herself was scared and ignorant of how aids was contracted. She showed the humanity of the world, she wasn't just a weak female standing by. She did research, she worked on helplines, organised protests and marches. The scene were she sits with the dying man who has no one was utterly heartbreaking. Collin's mum was another fabulous female character. So non judgmental, just a mum who loved her son so much. The storyline wasn't about Jill's private life, it was about the support she gave to her best friends.