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.

I have just read a couple of articles about Jill Nalder @SarahAndQuack and it does just very much focus on her helping her friends in the 80,s there is no mention of her personal life or wether she's married ,her sexuality at all ,of course this is her right but I agree it does make her a bit one dimensional .

YY, @JackieWeaverHandforthCouncil. And there've been a few posts on this thread saying it would be interesting to know more about Ash's story, too.

It's really not a way of doing down the show. Especially since we all know he wanted to write a much longer one and wasn't given the opportunity.

We also felt that there would have been more to Jill - female friends to go out with, her own relationships/one night stands. Not just the helpmeet to a bunch of hedonistic young men. I bet she did all of the cooking and cleaning in that flat too.

The synopsis says something about three young men coming to London and their sexual awakening etc ,so that would be Ritchie,Roscoe and Colin . So Ash is a bit of a supporting character too.

@Andbearsohmy

As great as Jill was, it wasn't her story being told and there was no need to develop her character more.

I would love a spin off series...set before any of the characters died/became ill...that developed them all a bit more, following all their exploits and fun throughout the 80s.

We definitely need a Colin In New York spin-off series, just imagine the potential! Wandering around the big city in his anorak!

Maybe not @MrsSchadenfreude ,this is purely anecdotal of course but the Gay men I have known where always far more house proud than me 🤣

I think this illustrates the difficulty and also the risk of basing a character in a fictional drama so heavily on a real person.

Maybe RTD wanted to respect Jill's privacy, or maybe he didn't want to draw attention to her flaws. Or maybe, despite having been a friend all these years, he never actually know her very well and only ever saw her as some kind of mum substitute.

We just don't know. But as it's a TV drama, I think we're perfectly entitled to discuss why. If he'd written the drama as some kind of personal gift to Jill then fine - up to him. But he didn't, he wrote it for an audience.

But I am not trying to close down the debate. I'm fine with the fact you disagree with me; I'm just interested in having the discussion. Whereas it seems to me you're trying to get people to stop talking about it at all, and see it as somehow wrong or disrespectful.

I’m trying to point out who’s story it is.

I've been following this thread for a while and there have been some interesting views on Jill's character. My initial thoughts after binge watching it all the night the 1st episode came out was that there could have been more to her. However I've changed my mind due to the following:

This is first and foremost a story - retelling - of the beginning of the AIDS pandemic and how it affected the gay community. Perhaps if it had been left at being called The Boys then this would have made clearer what RTD was trying to do. Also as the series was cut, over 5 episodes it really had to focus on what it was trying to put across - which to my mind it did brilliantly.

I also wondered at the reaction of those who lived through it and were personally affected at this time who are still alive today, both men and women. Surely it's more about them including Jill herself and how they feel they were represented?

From what I've read I'd say it has all been really so positive in how representational they feel it was of what happened including all the female characters. Women in the medical profession who might have been only newly qualified in the 80s have said how they left food trays outside the door as they didn't know any different about how it was transmitted. Women have posted to say how they supported their gay friends, going to hospital to see them. Lisa Power who was a Switchboard volunteer back then tweeted how lovely it was to see everyone paying tribute to the Jills, and also cheer the Lizbeth's (see pic) - all the fierce women, the lawyers, the rights workers, the early plHIV (people living with HIV) activists as well.

There's also been discussion by other women lwHIV on anything that's represented them in films & documentaries, certainly not begrudging what RTD has done but wondering what more can be done to portray them, also the lesbians, bisexual people, transgender people, people affected at a later date who contracted HIV from blood transfusions and so on. Perhaps a spin off? I'd personally love to see a 2nd and subsequent series addressing these, fictionalised but based on true stories.

So just my tuppence worth but no I don't think Jill was underdeveloped in this series but could be expanded on in another.

Sorry - pic of Lizbeth

^I don't think Gregory/Gloria rang Jill because she was a woman? I saw it more that he rang her because he could trust her the most to
A. Get him what he needed (the men were great characters but all flaky as fuck)
B. Be discrete about going round (I'm sure at some point someone says 'Roscoe tells everyone everything')
C. At hat point remember it was very much considered a gay man's disease and there was, in Gloria's eyes (who I believe knew he had the "gay man's disease) no chance of passing it onto a straight woman^

But why is it the woman who is the one who can be relied on to do the taking care?
I hadn't thought about point C though. I can see that he might have thought she'd be in less danger

Was the barrister - Elizabeth? - meant to represent someone specific that was well known at the time for defending such cases?

she had such a particular look, with the hood etc, that I wondered if she were famous in some way but I just didn't recognise.

@StillCoughingandLaughing, I just don't see the point of this. Yes, we all know it's a story about gay men, but it's also a popular TV programme that can be discussed without it being a problem.

@Thimbleberries - YY, I wondered about her too. I assumed the hood was just a normal headscarf? I wonder if she was connected in with Southall Black Sisters? I don't know if they had anything to do with the Aids crisis, but they might have done.

Yes, I think you're right and it was just a headscarf. Something about the striking colour and how she wore it had made me think that it was part of a particular organisation or something, and that she was meant to be a specific person, but I've read a little more and interviews with the person who played her, and it seems that she is fictional.

@Thimbleberries

Was the barrister - Elizabeth? - meant to represent someone specific that was well known at the time for defending such cases?

she had such a particular look, with the hood etc, that I wondered if she were famous in some way but I just didn't recognise.

No, like Jill she was representational as mentioned in my post above. the main focus was on the AIDS pandemic and the gay community.

metro.co.uk/2021/02/05/its-a-sin-seyan-sarvan-on-inspiration-for-lawyer-lizbeth-farooqi-14031606/

Joystir59 Yes of course she may have been a lesbian! Never occured to me .I thought she had a crush on Ritchie ,but maybe bi? As others said here 6/8 episodes would have been great .As far as Ritchies Mum went she just wanted to have her boy home, and nurse him by herself for a while which I understood .I think the shock of finding out the truth. sent her to abandon her quiet mum persona and let her grief out at the nearest person Jill,who happened to be there .

Yes I agree as I have said before @dottiedodah however terribly Richies mum behaved and she took it out on the wrong people it must have been a huge shock not only was Richie a completely different person to who she thought he was ,her boy was dying and nobody told her I realise this was Ritchie's decision but it must have been heart breaking for her

And I do agree it was awful of her to keep him away from his friends she had been kept away from Ritchie for a long time even though that was Ritchie's choice .

Another thought - would it be so terrible if the boys were Jill's total and complete life? If she chose the commit to her friends and a cause she truly believed in, does that make her one dimensional? Why did she need a relationship to validate her? There really are people who commit their lives to charities and causes, or families. Not snogging a boy at breakfast doesn't make Jill boring

No it's not such a bad thing @JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows particularly when you think of her age I didn't have a longstanding relationship in my twenties I did have some flings and one night stand,s but they were not important to me a lot of people in their twenties IME go through this ,my friends were my world and going out was very important to me
I'm now 47 and life has changed immeasurably I have my own family and a husband but it was a different time

And as @SarahAndQuack has said there. Should also be some drama series ( particularly UK)about Gay women but has anyone thought of making them? If not why not ?

With Jill being based on a real person and that person seemingly keeping much of her private life private, maybe she asked RTD not to include the majority of the things she got up to in 80s beyond whatever was essential to the storyline? I known if one of my friends was writing a TV drama, wanted to base a character on me, and asked my opinion then I would ask them to please not include that time I flashed an entire nightclub, all the times we got hammered, the ill-judged one night stands, the many illegal substances I took, that week in Ibiza, etc on the basis that my parents or children might one day watch it and they don't need to know details of what I got up to in the 90s beyond "Foxy liked a good night out".

I'd like to see a second series showing the 90s and the 00s with other characters stories and showing how perceptions (and knowledge) progressed to what it is today.

I thought she was poorly developed and very goody goody. I wonder if it was because RTDavies knew the real Jill and didnt want to show her as having any negative characteristics eg living through gay men because she was terrified of intimacy.
I was also surprised the real Jill was white given the fuss Davies had made about only gay actors playing gay roles. He obviously thinks the races of an actor is irrelevant, although if the Jill character had been black I wonder if he'd allow a white actress to play her? Jill was definitely the weak point in the series. Very sanctimonious and preachy.

[quote SarahAndQuack]**@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.[/quote]
I think it's a hell of a lot easier for men to do this than women.

Men are the default human, we are all conditioned to recognise their personhood above female personhood. Both men and women are socially conditioned to see men's feelings as more important, male priorities as the most important etc. Art made from the male perspective is seen as universal, art from the female perspective is niche.

I feel like the trouble with a drama about lesbians would be that the reception would be so different if it was "ground-breaking and explicit" in the same way as RTD's shows - i.e. if the sexual culture was foregrounded in the way he does. I mean personally I find the sex in RYD's work really sexy 🤭, but I know there are a lot of people who find it really confronting and a bit cringe because there is still a lot of discomfort with gay male sex in the mainstream (I think Brokeback Mountain remains the only big Hollywood movie to show two male leads having sex with each other).

Whereas lesbian sex (or lesbian sex as imagined by men, certainly) is a staple of porn, drama and indeed a lot of Hollywood films - not as a central point necessarily but as titillation. Any lesbian drama with actual, extensive, explicit sex scenes a la RTD wouldn't be shocking as such but would give the media every excuse not to take it seriously as a drama and just discuss it as "raunchy lesbians" and generally be immature about it. Because male gaze.

I'd love to think there would be a way to get around this but can't think what it could be.