It's a Sin

[Jellybean]

Members may be interested in viewing the trailer of It’s a Sin, the forthcoming UK Channel 4 drama set during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Also included below is a preview of an article to be published in the RadioTimes about the TV show, its writer Russell T Davies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_T_Davies)(he also wrote Queer as Folk – see clip below) and casting gay actors as gay characters.



Russell T Davies speaks out on the importance of casting gay actors as gay characters in It’s a Sin

"You wouldn’t cast someone able-bodied and put them in a wheelchair."

By Flora Carr
Monday, 11th January 2021 at 9:00 pm

It’s A Sin creator Russell T Davies has stressed the importance of casting gay actors in the roles of the gay male characters.

The Channel 4 series, starring the likes of Olly Alexander, Neil Patrick Harris, and Stephen Fry, is set during the 1980s AIDS epidemic and follows a group of young gay men who move to London.

Speaking exclusively to Radio Times, Davies said he thinks “authenticity” is a critical component when it comes to casting a TV show like It’s A Sin . . .

Source: RadioTimes (https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/drama/2021-01-11/its-a-sin-gay-casting/)


https://youtu.be/ltoWiLj_aIk


https://youtu.be/PL-fFiKGTTY

[francois]

Casting gay actors as gays, is a double standard. Many gays have portrayed straight guys for years and no problems. Think Rock Hudson.

[latintopxxx]

....very tricky this...be very cafeful what u wish for...like only white people can be cast in plays that originally had white casts like most of shakespeare...

[StevieWonders]

Davies seems to be espousing the current fad which started with the notion that only a “trans” actor can play a “trans” person. Presumably that means only the sub-class of “trans” who’ve had their cock cut off can play former males, and only those who’ve had a cock implant can play former females. It then moved on to condemn those hundreds of actors who over the years have “blacked up” to play Othello, since the role of a black person can only be played by a black person.

Latterly there have been “colour blind” period dramas featuring black people playing white characters - the maid in the 2017 adaptation of Howard’s End, for example, which underlines the hypocrisy of the “only blacks can play blacks” mantra.

Turning Francois’ comment around - should a straight actor be allowed to play a gay character? Isn’t the whole point of acting to represent someone you are not in a wholly convincing way?

As for “trans”: I’ve often said to a (female) family member whose teenage daughter has decided she’s “trans” and now “identifies as” a male, all it proves is what I’ve said all along - the male gender is both preferable and superior.

[Jellybean]

On July 4, 1982 Terry Higgins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Higgins) was among the first people in the UK known to die of an AIDS related illness - leading to the establishment of the Terrence Higgins Trust (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Higgins_Trust). I arrived in London in November 1982, and in 1983, one of my lodgers volunteered to work for the newly set up Terrence Higgins Trust and, in those early years, much of what I learned of this new deadly disease I learnt from him.

The following further It's a Sin teaser trailers brings back many memories, some happy as I recall the excitement I felt at starting my new work and gay life in London and some unhappy, as I think back on the friends who didn’t make it. :(


https://youtu.be/9owK7qSxLTA

And not wanting to end this post on a down beat note, I have included the song, It’s a Sin one of my favourite Pet Shop Boys songs . . .


https://youtu.be/-q7OhXIvV4E

[StevieWonders]

There’s a great line in this week’s Spectator: “chip away at the horrible straight white hegemony under which oppressed people like the millionaire Russel T Davies OBE live their undoubtedly difficult lives”. The whole piece (“Who wants to be lectured by children?”) is worthwhile reading.

[arsenal]

I consider Russel T Davies to be something of a modern day Shakespeare such is the depth and quality of his writing. His work includes QaF, A very English Scandal, Doctor Who and the brilliant Years and Years. So I will forgive him this blip of nonsense with regards to which actors can play which roles. Under this idea Gandalf and Dumbledore aka Sir Ian and Sir Michael need to swap roles and remake 12 movies. Also we don't get the stunning Charlie Hunnam frolicking naked on the bed or Rupert Graves naked in Maurice.

So Russel, it's like this. Over the last 30 years or so we've managed to acquire for ourselves the same age of consent, marriage, adoption, extra protection against hate crime, no work place discrimination, seats in government, the highest paid entertainer at the BBC and even a Prime Minister. So we don't need this patronising nonsense thank you.

[StevieWonders]

I consider Russel T Davies to be something of a modern day Shakespeare such is the depth and quality of his writing. His work includes QaF, A very English Scandal, Doctor Who and the brilliant Years and Years.
There we must disagree. Tom Stoppard is by far the better dramatist. As far as I’m aware Davies has not written much - if anything - for the stage.

[arsenal]

a, not the

[StevieWonders]

a, not theIn comparing two known alternatives, standard English grammar dictates using the definite rather than the indefinite article.

[arsenal]

The initial error was yours. Everything else is catch up.

[StevieWonders]

Ah, 5:30AM must post something for Mrs Bennett. I know, Russell T Davies is not the UK’s greatest living dramatist - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/tom-stoppard-hermione-lee/617799/

[Nirish guy]

So, and getting back to the subject at hand ie the programme itself.......

Wow just wow ! Such powerful TV !

We had recorded all the episodes in one go and so settled down to watch them all back to back in one go the other night .....and while that was a great way to keep continuity etc, omg we were both in bits by the end - and if not the "end" but the endS of most episodes !

It was weird as I really enjoyed it as a series and wee Olly is just as cute as a button in it, but OMG the topic was just so harrowing and upsetting to think of all those poor people dying and worse still being treated like that as that was happening.

My Bf (who's younger and not from the UK) just couldn't understand or believe me when I told him "Yes, that WAS exactly what it was like then" and "Yes those tombstone commercials and people thinking gays were worse than the black death was EXACTLY what they were teaching in schools etc back then and are just some of the reasons people couldn't come out" ( thanks Mrs Thatcher and Section 28 !!) - so I think perhaps for the first time he realised just how far the LGBT "community" have come now in terms of whatever (half) acceptance we all enjoy now compared to back then.

Thankfully of course things both generally and certainly in terms of HIV / AIDS treatment and care have now improved massively since back in the dark days and this programme is hopefully now acting as a reminder and wake up call to the younger generation of gays out there who simply had NO IDEA both what went on back then and how people and how MANY people died. It's also hopefully a wake up call too to them as to how THEIR rights and freedoms NOW should never be taken lightly or taken for granted as what was given can of course be so easily be taken away again. I really hope so anyway.

So, if you get a chance to watch the series I recommend it - as well as ( if you're prone to shed the odd tear as I am on occasion) a tissue (or six) to hand as well, just in case.

[Ruthrieston]

I am in Thailand and don't have access to the series, but I would love to see it. I was a nurse in one of the largest HIV/AIDS wards at St Stephen's Hospital in Fulham, central London, about 1986. We had eighteen beds and at least nine or ten deaths every day, mostly young gay men. One of my worst memories was one day when I was making up the bed quickly for a new patient with a young nurse, 24 I think, who had only started to work on the ward that week. When I looked up I saw that his lips were turning blue, and persuaded him to get in the bed. He had PCP, one of the quickest causes of death. I tried to call his family up in Yorkshire, but they were not interested having cut him off when he came out as gay earlier that year. When my shift finished at 3.30pm I went to sit with him, and he died about 7.30pm. My own family had cut me off when I came out after qualifying as a nurse in Aberdeen that year, and I moved to London to start a new open life, but I was surrounded by death. The hospital porters wouldn't touch our patients so the nurses had to bring them into the hospital, and we had to pack and ligate the bodies of the dead and take them to the mortuary ourselves too. Too many painful memories. But happy ones too, as gay people volunteered to help our patients and support those who recovered for a while and went home.

[StevieWonders]

I am in Thailand and don't have access to the series, but I would love to see it.Torrents are available from extv.re (I’m sure an eagle-eyed Mod will determine whether I can post that)

[Armando]

I was surrounded by death. The hospital porters wouldn't touch our patients so the nurses had to bring them into the hospital, and we had to pack and ligate the bodies of the dead and take them to the mortuary ourselves too. Too many painful memories. But happy ones too, as gay people volunteered to help our patients and support those who recovered for a while and went home.
A most moving post, Ruthrieston. I think too many of us who lived through that period conveniently forget the absolute fear which affected many of us for almost a decade. To be diagnosed with HIV meant death. It was as simple as that. And thanks to the name first given to the illness by doctors "The Gay Man's Plague" little attention was paid to the possibility that HIV and AIDS could infect other people. Those poor haemophiliacs who were infected through infected blood products including the young teenage poster boy Ryan White and the great tennis star Arthus Ashe!

It is useful to draw a parallel with covd19. With HIV, the Reagan administration wanted nothing to do with the new disease. It consistently reduced the amount of funding requested by the CDC. For four years Reagan would not even mention it, until after his old pal the very gay Rock Hudson died from it. Soon after that I had just turned on the television after dinner with friends in San Francisco. There was the Surgeon General, a whiskered ex-army man and a staunch conservative, giving advice on the need to avoid rimming!

Had the amount of worldwide funding that has been devoted to fighting covid19 been provided to HIV research in its first year, would the world now be HIV free? Why can politicians not leave medicine to the doctors and scientists? There can be little doubt that Reagan turning a blind eye resulted in many millions of deaths that might not have occurred. Just as Trump's callous disregard of covid19 resulted in hundreds of thousands on needless deaths - and the number is climbing.

[arsenal]

Ruthrieston wrote.
"I am in Thailand and don't have access to the series"

Yes you do. Seek and you will find.

[StevieWonders]

Torrents are available from extv.re (I’m sure an eagle-eyed Mod will determine whether I can post that)Correction - eztv

[arsenal]

Don't need torrents.

[Jellybean]

. . . Wow just wow! Such powerful TV ! . . . So, if you get a chance to watch the series I recommend it - as well as ( if you're prone to shed the odd tear as I am on occasion) a tissue (or six) to hand as well, just in case.

Very well said NIrish-guy! I am watching the TV shows weekly as they are broadcast rather than downloading them in advance. It’s quite a rollercoaster of a series and certainly covers the whole gamut of emotions. Last Friday’s episode, episode 3, was particularly emotional and brought back some sad memories.

I don’t know if it is covered in future episodes, but one thing I vaguely remember at the time was a suggestion from a Member or Members of Parliament that gay bars should be closed to prevent the spread of AIDS. Then someone pointed out that if they closed the gay bars, gays would simply drink in the straight bars. The idea was, I believe, quickly dropped. I could not find a reference to this during a quick Internet search, but I did find an article in PinkNews from November 2018 covering the following:


‘Gay plague’: The vile, horrific and inhumane way the media reported the AIDS crisis

Source: PinkNews (https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/11/30/world-aids-day-1980s-headlines-tabloids/)

And Ruthrieston, thank you for sharing a very personal and moving account of your memories of being a nurse at St Stephen's Hospital in Fulham in the '80s. Your mention of a hospital in Fulham reminded me that I used to get my HIV and other sexual health checks at the Westminster Hospital in the '80s until it closed and moved to the new Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, which, I believe, replaced the St Stephen’s Hospital in Fulham. I also recall accompanying two friends, who had been given an HIV diagnosis, and supporting them during some of their visits to the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital. I am happy to report that both are still around today and living with HIV.

The first TV drama about the AIDS virus that I recall seeing was an American production called An Early Frost. It too reduced me to tears. It was particularly poignant because it was broadcast at a time when pharmaceutical drugs to treat HIV had not yet been found. And if members haven’t already seen it, I recommend they watch it whenever the opportunity arises.

A storyline synopsis from Wikipedia and a trailer are posted below:


An Early Frost is a 1985 American made-for-television drama film and the first major film, made for television or feature films, to deal with the topic of AIDS. It was first broadcast on the NBC television network on November 11, 1985 . . . Michael Pierson, a successful lawyer, suffers a bad coughing jag at work and is rushed to the hospital. There he learns from a doctor that he has been exposed to HIV . . .

Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Early_Frost)


https://youtu.be/XSZ7MDptwjc

[Nirish guy]

I don’t know if it is covered in future episodes.......


Well now usually when someone i half way through watching a series and they make a comment like that my standard come back ( no matter what the ending ) is " well, I'm sorry to tell you this, but, they all die in the end !" - but on this occasion I'll have to refrain as unfortunately for many that did indeed turn out to be exactly the case of course :-(

[wingnut]

Call me superficial but I just want the telly to make me laugh. I am not watching this series.

[Nirish guy]

Thankfully it's not mandatory Wingnut - although for the younger gays out there maybe it SHOULD be !

[StevieWonders]

It’s a sin - a lesbian perspective:
It was something of a shock, watching the Channel 4 show It’s A Sin, to see that they were also absent from a recreation of London’s 1980s gay scene. ‘I wish I could have paid tribute to the lesbians’ ran a Diva magazine headline about its writer, Russell T. Davies. Well, why didn’t you, then? My friend Rose Collis — the writer, performer and lesbian activist whose filmThe Boy and The Bear is available on YouTube next month — said: ‘It does a great disservice to women like me who campaigned, wrote, and mourned our gay brothers. I just cannot understand how a drama set in the London lesbian and gay community of the 1980s fails to have any actual lesbians in it — now that’s a sin.’

https://app.spectator.co.uk/2021/02/10/womens-movement/content.html