On his way to the promised land, he packs up a cache of gay porn magazines he’s worried his mom will find and throws a pack of condoms slyly bestowed upon him by his father into the sea. The show opens in the fall of 1981, as a closeted teenage chatterbox named Ritchie Tozer (Olly Alexander of the pop act Years & Years) is preparing to leave his repressive middle-class home on the Isle of Wight and study law at a university in London. Read More: How the New British Drama It’s a Sin Is Telling the History of the 1980s AIDS Crisis-and Sparking Change in the Present Davies-the prolific TV producer who previously chronicled aspects of British gay life in Cucumber, A Very English Scandal and the groundbreaking Queer as Folk-wrote all five episodes, anchoring his scripts in real history that has haunted him for decades and deploying rage, empathy and humor in just the right places. 18, the miniseries, which broke viewership records when it aired in the UK, spans ten years at the outset of the AIDS crisis in London.
That is the predicament facing the group of friends at the center of HBO Max’s deeply humane, richly observed, frequently funny and fully devastating It’s a Sin.
