It's a Sin, 9 pm Channel 4, 22nd Jan CONTAINS SPOILERS **titled edited by MNHQ**

[notawittyname1954]

I keep seeing trailers for this. Anyone else looking forward to it?

I think his mum did love him, in her own way. All through the series she was desperate to visit Richie but he kept putting her off. Richie was in denial too, in his own way- he preferred to keep his London life separate, he couldn’t quite tell her each time he tried. They were quite alike in that sense. They were a bit scared/suppressed by his dad, who ironically turned out to be quite soft at the end. I think Richie would’ve known that his friends were thinking of him, deep down. Yes she was absolutely awful not letting his friends see him, but I think she was a little bit in denial. She didn’t want to believe he’d die. That’s why she wittered in about the Mouse in Amsterdam rather than listening to him.

Roscoe was the amazing one. He came from a very tough culture yet refused to be anyone but himself right from the start, even though there were really tough consequences. And I loved the ending with him and his father.

I know 2 of my gay friends at the time hadn't told their parents, and although they were camp as tits, their parents hadn't sussed (or maybe they secretly knew but never referred to it)..
So although Jill was right in blaming her for a loveless house, its how it was in many households.. they obviously DID love Ritchie, but never really knew how to show it, 'not the done thing' and all that..

Ritchies mum is a very complex character. Brilliantly written, you feel both some sympathy & absolute loathing. She embodied all the parents who took their children away from those who loved & accepted them and made them die alone. Except her slight twist was she didn’t completely loathe her son for being gay. He died at a more knowledgable time that he couldn’t pass it on from hugging or clothes etc. Would her reaction have been different 6 years earlier? More like Glorias family?

I loved the twist that the dad didn’t care about him being gay & his sheer grief at his son dying.

And I love love loved the scene at the end with the gathered chosen family. You long for Ritchie to be there, you long for Colin to be there. The hug between the 3 of them left made me sob like a baby. Their best friends gone in the most heartbreaking way 😭

I was only young in 1991 but even Freddie Mercury kept his diagnosis secret until his last 24 hours. There seemed be a dramatic shift in the mid 90s.
Valerie also lives on the Isle of Wight. A very old fashioned and possibly behind the times place.

There did seem to be a bit of a shift around 1995 when Kenny Everett died.

That last episode made me sob. Loved Jill the whole way through this series. I understood why Valarie behaved how she did, but I really did hate her and how she treated Jill and Richie.

www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/02/its-a-sin-lydia-west-interview?mbid=social_twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_brand=vf

Catching up on thread (was avoiding spoilers) but I'm now at the point of shouting at the tv!

Jill didn't stop her learning, realising, accepting who her son really was! She had 18 years before Jill met him to see the real son she had.

But I'm also crying, because it's so clear how much they love Richie.

The ward for Richie in 1988 is more akin to what I saw things changing to in hospitals outside of London in the mid to late 90's. It takes time for these changes to filter through.

@Thimbleberries the first wave of patients were mainly gay men, iv drug addicts and prostitutes. The drug addicts and prostitutes from what I've read and also sort of based on personal experience, were less likely to go to a dr and get a diagnosis and so were often not diagnosed until they died and that fact was very much hidden for several years. It was gay men who first were politically active on the matter too, drug addicts being generally speaking more tied up in their addiction and prostitutes usually had many issues too which prevented them from being activists, so it was the gay men that did it.

I met prostitutes who wouldn't be tested because their pimps would batter them if they did and batter them more if they were positive, they also feared being made homeless as they were often living with their pimps too. And of course they had children and they didn't want the huge stigma attached to them - which it was if it was discovered. There were kids getting bullied if their mothers were sick, there was also issues with foster carers refusing to take children who's parents/mothers were positive. That's something I have NEVER seen discussed ANYWHERE but I know it happened

In terms of spread, I'm not sure of stats but I believe it spread more quickly to iv drug users. I think because they tend not to look after themselves health wise not just in terms of their addiction but poor diet etc

What has annoyed me is people on other sm claiming that the scenes with locked hospital rooms etc didn't happen - they are wrong! They may not have experienced it but it DID Happen.

I think valeries actions were wrong and sad and heartbreaking, but I agree she was dealing with something she'd no comprehension of. My mother is mid 70's and would be around a decade younger than her. My mum is pretty open minded and accepting but my dad, well if my brother were gay that would be a major problem!

Religion certainly didn't help matters, I'm Catholic raised and there's still a lot of issues within the Catholic community regarding hiv/aids, which is somewhat ironic given the Catholic contribution to the spread of hiv/aids in Africa in particular.

I think that meant that straight couples weren't engaging in as much casual sex / we're using condoms to prevent pregnancy.

Again I don't know stats but ime this was not the case. The pill was the main contraceptive of choice in the 80's for heterosexuals. I can well remember so so many friends having arguments with boyfriends/dates/ons who were very resistant to using condoms "cos I'm clean you can see I'm clean/I ain't gay I'm not even bi" etc even when we KNEW that Hetero transmission was a risk, maybe not as much of a risk as Anal sex but still a risk. I dumped 2 boyfriends for this attitude as I was petrified and I refused to have unsafe sex with them. I also had friends who imo were careless and blasé and were frankly lucky given their behaviour at the time.

@Thimbleberries you seem to have very odd ideas about sexual behaviour in the 80's? OF COURSE there was lots of casual sex happening, this was 2 decades after the sexual revolution! (For hets) I genuinely think you need to learn more about social history from that era. You seem to think it was more like the 40's/50's (and I can assure you casual sex was happening then too! Both my grans were pregnant when married and 1 hadn't been dating my grandfather very long! I'm the product of a shotgun wedding myself!)

Regarding Henry and Juan, there's no agreement on exactly how long hiv/aids has actually been around, there are some theories that it was around as early as the 1910's! I think that theories placing it as being around as early as the 1890's have been debunked but the truth is we don't know for sure.

What was also likely a factor is greater migration. The lack of spread isn't necessarily just down to certain behaviours not being prevalent (gay sex and anal sex after all have been around for millenia!) but may have been constrained simply by the lack of human travel. So the development of the flight industry is very probably a factor.

As a young person in the 80s I can assure that there was a LOT of risky, out of wedlock sex going on absolutely!

I don't think people realise that Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Kenneth Williams , Frankie Howerd etc were not considered to be gay. They were funny, 'a caution'

Sorry but my experience was that this was known/acknowledged just not openly discussed. My parents and even grandparents knew and understood that certain famous people were gay they just didn't mention it in public

But I agree it was still taboo enough that a mother wouldn't have wanted to admit to themselves that their son was gay.

@DishedUp another issue then was hiv positive gay men who actively chose to only have sex with other hiv positive gay men, what wasn't known then was there were different strains of hiv and some more deadly than others.

and they were just naive 21 year olds by the end it started in 1981 when they were 18 and ended in 1989, they'd have been 26/27 by then

The more of your posts I read the more I think you've lead an extremely sheltered and limited life.

I'm an army brat, my friends ARE my family, I'm closer to them than my immediate family
And they're the ones that have truly been there for me.

It ended in 1991 Last episode was set in 1991 apart from the first few minutes with Richie in a stage play which was set in 1988.

@Jellykat

FourSeasons absolutely! It may have been legal in the '80s, but i can still remember my obviously gay friends and i having bricks thrown at us (literally) when we walked down certain streets. The animosity increased of course, once the epidemic became more widely publicised.

And far more recently than this. In the 90s living in Kings Cross we would run the gauntlet of bottles and abuse walking past certain pubs if my male friends were dressed up for a night and on our way to Soho. Equally I have had three close friends badly beaten in homophobic attacks in London in the last 10 years.

We like to think society is enlightened these days, but it depends on who you encounter. Only in the early 2000s a friend of mine nursed another friend at home who was dying of AIDS, because his family would have nothing to do with him. And whilst it is easier for many to come out these days, that isn't the case for everyone, and many people are still closeted when it comes to their families. Yes things have improved so much in the last 40 years, but let's not ignore the fact that there are many many problems still with stigma and homophobia

About ten years ago, I had a huge uproar in one of my lessons, as the class I was teaching (East London) would not accept that black people could be gay unless they had been somehow led to it. We discussed Justin Fashnau and the teenagers in my class were mostly of the opinion that 1. Fashnau was only gay because he had been brought up by white foster parents and 2. He was right to kill himself because he was unclean.
These days I work in teenage mental health and deal with too many young people who are suffering because of homophobia. We may move in more diverse circles, but we mustn't ignore the experiences of those who don't, such as a PP above who claimed that "no one cared" who was or wasn't gay in the 80s - many did and many still do.

I think RTD has given a voice to the shame and stigma with an extremely evocative backdrop of the 80s, but it is still there.

@Timeforatincture

Just watched the last part. TBH I do think that Valerie was too unspeakable to be believable. That last part was set in 1991 - only 30 years ago. I mean really - it wasn't the 1950s. I knew heaps of gay people in the 1980s - didn't you? If you were my sort of age (at uni 1982 -85) . No-one gave a shit if you were straight or gay? And what sort of monster would keep her dying son away from his friends? Just not plausible that someone would be that vile, A shame because I loved the rest of it. Especially the Welsh mum. Much more like a loving mum.

I think you are very very lucky if you have never met anyone who doesn't give a shit if you are straight or gay. Of course I have always known "heaps of" gay people all of my adult life, but please don't deny people's very real and very recent experiences of stigma and homophobia. There are still people dying of AIDS in this country because of the legacy of stigma which still remains, and the shame in facing that reality.

@Timeforatincture

Just watched the last part. TBH I do think that Valerie was too unspeakable to be believable. That last part was set in 1991 - only 30 years ago. I mean really - it wasn't the 1950s. I knew heaps of gay people in the 1980s - didn't you? If you were my sort of age (at uni 1982 -85) . No-one gave a shit if you were straight or gay? And what sort of monster would keep her dying son away from his friends? Just not plausible that someone would be that vile, A shame because I loved the rest of it. Especially the Welsh mum. Much more like a loving mum.

Shes extremely kind compared to my mother and a lot of so called parents that I know.

@Timeforatincture - unfortunately only last year a young man was very badly beaten & scarred for life on a homophobic attack in Manchester. The bloke told him 'you all need to die'. It's very, very real and still very prevalent.

I finished the whole thing in the early hours of this morning- I actually went to bed, couldn’t sleep so went back to watch episodes 3-5 where I cried buckets. Those poor lads. I was born in the mid 80s so I don’t really have any memories of that decade so obviously ignorant of the utter hell people like Gloria, Colin and Ritchie went through until I watched this. I was sobbing at Gloria’s family burning everything he ever owned on that bonfire. At first when I saw his clothes and what seemed to be his bed I figured ‘ok, they’re clearly just ignorant and think they can catch it from surfaces but then I saw his baby pictures and Childrens toys and things so they basically erased him from their family like he’d never existed. I know it was a different time but as a mother I can’t get my head round it. And lovely sweet Colin’s mammy was of the same generation and didn’t seem to change how much she absolutely loved and doted on her son. I kind of guessed she would. His getting ill, being locked in that horrible room for god knows how long by himself before they got him out and then getting sicker and dying broke my heart even more than Gloria’s death I think- possibly because we saw more of Colin and I adored him straight away- lovely nature, wide eyed innocence and excitement about the world around him. I will say that while his only apparent sex partner treated him badly I felt so sorry for that lad too- Colin had his wonderful mum by his side right til the end and her love for him never wavered. The other lad had a mum using homophobic slurs about her own son when he was probably dying too.

I felt very sorry for Ritchie’s mother as well as Ritchie himself of course. She found out in the space of what, 5 minutes?- that her beloved son was gay (so there was a side of him she just wasn’t aware of/didn’t want to accept) was seriously ill and was dying and in her mind no one told her and she felt robbed of that precious time with him. The woman in the kitchen with the squash was needlessly horrible- Yes it was obvious that Ritchie was gay and it seems crazy that it never seemed to enter her head that he might be but come on, she’s in shock. That said she was unforgivably horrible to Jill and more so to Ritchie when he was at home and dying. She let her hate for Jill overtake her love for her son. She knew he wanted to see Jill before he died and she didn’t allow it to happen. And the poor lad died alone in the end. That didn’t need to happen. As for Ritchie’s dad- he got off lightly as no one demanded he explain how he didn’t know his own son was gay. That said, he loved him that was obvious. I did wonder if he too was gay, I don’t know why exactly but he seemed to instantly be fine with his sexuality which I didn’t expect as he was apparently a total racist from what I can tell.

Ritchie's friends had the best memories of him. Valerie only had memories of him aged 5 singing A Mouse In A Windmill.

www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a35533368/its-a-sin-ending-explained/

"At the End of 'It's a Sin', Britain's Past and Present Collide
We need to talk about Jill and Valerie's beachfront summit"

It did happen a lot until very recently. That’s why there was so much campaigning for gay marriages and civil partnerships (both relatively new) because otherwise gay people’s partners weren’t next of kin and could be overridden by parents in hospital life/death decisions etc. I know a few people that experienced that.

Also, anyone thinking that being gay was accepted by the majority in the 80s, hasn't done their homework - you might have been to a more inclusive college/uni - but for the most part the gay community put up with a lot of shit and continued to do so for years. I taught in the inner city in the 90s - batty boy was a common insult as was batty man.
20 years ago - 2000 - you still had playground taunts and homophobic language. Damilola Taylor, who was murdered for 'being lippy' had been called gay boy only a few weeks before (As the New Statesman said: Was Damilola gay? Probably not. He was aged just ten and it is unlikely he was sexual at all. Was he perceived to be gay? Apparently. He was bookish and non-macho, and he had a pretty face. For local yobs, this was evidence he was queer).
Things have improved slightly for younger LGBT people now according to a recent survey by Stonewall (as far as support in school goes) but still progress to be made overall.
www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/jun/26/nine-points-up-on-europe-data-shows-uk-increase-in-lgbtq-harassment
and following Brexit vote 4 years ago it was toxic.
www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/08/homophobic-attacks-double-after-brexit-vote

Predominant culture was still definitely homophobic when I was at school (00s). Most people didn't come out until they had left school. Anyone who was out at school had an awful time and the teachers weren't really sympathetic, seeming to think it was attention seeking and they should have kept quiet about it. It was OK within individual groups of tolerant friends, but society at large was not OK with it.

Calling people Gaylord, dyke and various other horrible words to do with sexuality that I won’t repeat, was still very much a thing when I was in high school and college in the late 90s and early 00s. Questioning someone’s sexuality was one of the worst things you could do. It must have the worst thing for those who were hiding their own. I questioned mine for most of my teens. If watch comedy shows from the 70s/80s/90s there’s often a very camp character who you’re meant to at least guess is gay if they’re not out and their campness is often made the punchline. Like the first season of Friends when they discuss that they each thought Chandler was gay because he had a “quality” and he freaks out. Or Will and Grace where leaving Jack aside, Will was apparently such a sissy growing up that of course he turned out to be gay. I like W&G btw but that annoys me a bit as it lacks imagination imo.

On the other hand now my eldest is young a teenager in high school and she and most of her friends are apparently not straight, one or 2 are apparently gender fluid, and it’s no big deal everyones open about it. And I think that’s fantastic. I was so surprised that it’s not a big deal now (in that school at least) There’s been comments from dickheads but not many- “omg you’re so gay!” Which is answered with “yeah. So?” I guess they don’t get the response they want so they move on and pick something else to be horrible about. My daughter told me she’s gay which wasn’t a shock at all and even if it had been a surprise to me it wouldn’t have been a problem.

I found that hard to watch. Like another poster I was born in Edinburgh in 1980 and there was a stigma that essentially the north of the city was riddled with AIDS - my parents wanted me to effectively never go to Leith or I would become a prostitute (with AIDS), a junkie (with AIDS) or meet gay men. Who would presumably want to give me (a young straight female) AIDS. There was a lot of ignorance. I remember wearing a red ribbon from around 1996 and my mum being mortified and wanted me to hide it because it was a sign I had AIDS or that i was a gay man. I ended up moving into a flat with friends, one who was a lesbian, and went out on the gay scene with my school friend who had just come out as gay. It was late 90s and definitely much more safe sex as far as I know than the iaS era. I also found myself channelled into the "fag hag" role which I hadn't expected at all. I was definitely Jill'd too in that I was a supporting character, the supportive caring person. I didn't mind some of that but I had my role defined for me.

I didn't like Olly Alexander - purely because I think he lets his smile work harder than it should. I've known guys like Ritchie and I didn't think RTD gave him enough depth really. People are much more complicated than RTD writes.

But how devastating it must have been. Your friends, your partner's just dying and in such a cruel way. And not just one or two but groups of people. So many. And so young. There was ignorance and disbelief bit there must have been a sense of persecution too - like Jill said at the end, the perfect disease for justifying homophobia.

I cried buckets though. Just how unfair and cruel it all was. The treatment too, the fear. It's a good spotlight by RTD but I really wish he had either had more time to round out the characters or had had someone tell him that they were not quite real.

I loved Cucumber - that was the series with the older couple that split up? My god, the episode (the episode) of flashbacks just hit me so hard. That series has wonderfully rounded people.

@DanielODonkey

I found that hard to watch. Like another poster I was born in Edinburgh in 1980 and there was a stigma that essentially the north of the city was riddled with AIDS - my parents wanted me to effectively never go to Leith or I would become a prostitute (with AIDS), a junkie (with AIDS) or meet gay men. Who would presumably want to give me (a young straight female) AIDS. There was a lot of ignorance. I remember wearing a red ribbon from around 1996 and my mum being mortified and wanted me to hide it because it was a sign I had AIDS or that i was a gay man. I ended up moving into a flat with friends, one who was a lesbian, and went out on the gay scene with my school friend who had just come out as gay. It was late 90s and definitely much more safe sex as far as I know than the iaS era. I also found myself channelled into the "fag hag" role which I hadn't expected at all. I was definitely Jill'd too in that I was a supporting character, the supportive caring person. I didn't mind some of that but I had my role defined for me.

I didn't like Olly Alexander - purely because I think he lets his smile work harder than it should. I've known guys like Ritchie and I didn't think RTD gave him enough depth really. People are much more complicated than RTD writes.

But how devastating it must have been. Your friends, your partner's just dying and in such a cruel way. And not just one or two but groups of people. So many. And so young. There was ignorance and disbelief bit there must have been a sense of persecution too - like Jill said at the end, the perfect disease for justifying homophobia.

I cried buckets though. Just how unfair and cruel it all was. The treatment too, the fear. It's a good spotlight by RTD but I really wish he had either had more time to round out the characters or had had someone tell him that they were not quite real.

I loved Cucumber - that was the series with the older couple that split up? My god, the episode (the episode) of flashbacks just hit me so hard. That series has wonderfully rounded people.

I thought Richie was actually the most complex and thought out. We saw his background and how scared he was of being himself back home. It shaped him and made me understand his behaviour. He was oppressed on the Isle of Wight and went to London to be himself. I thought the fear and avoidance of the fact he had HIV was very good and realistic

@Botoxtime I agree with you. He hid a lot behind that smile and there were some quiet moments like when they got the phone call about Colin and the others were all hugging and he was sitting alone on the floor and you saw the realisation in his face. I loved his bravado. Not giving in. Having chemo. Putting on that act to hide what was going on underneath. I thought Olly and the whole cast was wonderful and it was so sad that died alone even with his family around him.

inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/women-hiv-aids-uk-1980s-activists-882211?ito=twitter_share_article-top

‘Am I the only woman in Britain living with this?’ The hidden history of women with HIV
Women who contracted the virus in the mid 1980s often found themselves isolated and with no sense of community

"I cried buckets though. Just how unfair and cruel it all was. The treatment too, the fear. It's a good spotlight by RTD but I really wish he had either had more time to round out the characters or had had someone tell him that they were not quite real. "

There were supposed to be eight episodes. Channel 4 only gave him five. I bet they're regretting that now.