The 50 best TV shows of 2021, No 1: It’s a Sin
Russell T Davies's Aids drama was gut-wrenching and it made us weep time and again, but it also made us truly love the characters. What a devastating delight
How was it possible to enjoy It's a Sin, knowing what was to come? Russell T Davies's great skill was in making it seem like it would be rude not to. It might have been reasonable to expect a certain solemnity from this five-part drama about the arrival of Aids in Britain and the devastation it wrought, but what was less predictable, perhaps, was the furious, beautiful joy of it. It was gut-wrenching and it was terrible, but god, it was funny and it was full of life.
The story corralled a group of young men into the flatshare that would become known as the Pink Palace", under the capable watch of house mother-type Jill (Lydia West). At the centre of this ensemble was Ritchie (Years & Years' Olly Alexander, returning to his former acting career), a bright-eyed dreamer who arrives in London to become an actor; Colin, a sweet-natured walking anorak who eventually swaps his suburban digs for a room in the house; and Roscoe (Omari Douglas), a tart-tongued queen who flames out of a meal with his traditional Nigerian family with inimitable style, eventually finding himself at the heart of the British establishment, in a roundabout sort of way.
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