Absolutely loved this. Binged watched it, and then binged watched it again. Have watched the first episode for a third time, and still picking up on things I missed.
Reading all I can get my hands on, and came on here to see if there was a thread - not disappointed - thank you @notawittyname1954!
People can dislike certain characters and/or their behaviour (Ritchie sleeping with people when he knew he was infected, Valerie at the end), but all RTD is doing is holding a mirror up to the period and showing us what actually happened.
The Valerie storyline is based on real events, according to RTD and Jill, that I’m sure happened all the time. Parents turning up at a hospital, and in the space of 5 minutes, finding out their son a). is gay, b). has AIDS and c). is dying.
She freaked out. She needed someone to blame, and she couldn’t bring herself to blame her beloved son.
And what did she do in the end? She let him die alone, thinking his best friends had forgotten about him and had moved on, for her own selfish ends. This sort of thing would not have been unusual.
My DM was born in the 30s and died before my DB came out. I don’t think she suspected at all - he was 30 by the time he came out, and very much a Colin figure. Clearly Ritchie is a very different kettle of fish and it’s hard to imagine not at least suspecting. But Ritchie went to great lengths to keep it from both of them (shame) and it was a different era, albeit to very recent.
There’s a whole conversation about Ritchie and Donald. Ritchie doesn’t know for sure who gave it to whom, and Jill says the only reason Ritchie suspects it might be Donald (legion on his back aside) is because his is the only name R remembers.
Roscoe. Loved him. That brittle, show-boating, don’t-give-a-fuck facade, belying a gentle, vulnerable interior.
Gloria’s baby photos being burnt - heart-breaking. Ritchie’s dance, and his kind friend Martin.
Poor Colin - sacked for getting the papers Jill asked him to get, just so they could all learn and understand more. And then what happened to him.
Henry and Juan Pablo - NPH said in the Graham Norton interview that their role was to depict a monogamous relationship, so I also have a question mark over how they contracted it, given they’d been together for 30 years. How Henry tried to downplay JP’s illness (three-act play), but inside he’d must have been terrified. And then separated from him at the end, his husband, to all intents and purposes.
‘Going home’. Gosh that whole concept was gutting. And most of them going home to places they’d escaped from, that didn’t accept them. They had to spend their dying days away from their loved ones, their ‘chosen’ families.
And last but not least, ‘I pissed. In Mrs Thatcher’s coffee. Black man’s piss’. 🖤
Won’t forget this for a long, long time.