It’s A Sin: How the Channel 4 Show Succeeds

It’s A Sin cast. [Image: Channel 4]

By Amos We

Recently, the music industry has been giving us nostalgic energy. From Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia to Kylie Minogue’s Disco, these disco-influenced albums manifested the glory of the 1980s.

Whilst everyone is immersed in the four-on-the-floor beats and the sense of nostalgia, Channel 4 dropped a bomb with its new miniseries It’s A Sin as a wake-up call and cracked everyone’s rose-tinted glasses – the 80s was not as glorious as it might have seemed.

In case you’ve not caught up with the show that everyone is talking about, It’s A Sin narrates the 10-year story of a group of friends who live in the same flat while facing the outbreak of HIV/AIDS from 1981 to 1991. After two weeks of its release on Channel 4’s streaming service, the show garnered 6.5 million views across its five episodes, becoming one of the biggest hits for Channel 4.

However, it is not the first time someone challenges the theme of AIDS in a TV show. American television channel FX did that in 2018 with their drama series POSE, which has been renewed for a third season. 

What made It’s A Sin stand out?

It’s interesting to look at their cast and production team – most of whom are queers. The creator, Russell T Davies, being a gay man himself, insisted on only casting gay actors in gay roles. It has always been a contentious issue to have straight actors cast in gay roles, while gay actors are often turned away from straight roles. Davies has done a great job to contend with the unequal circumstances. Not only does he prevent the job opportunities from being taken by straight actors, but the fully queer cast also delivers the story naturally and heart-stirringly. 

The fact that Peter Hoar is the director of the show proves that Davies is serious about wanting the story to be told by queers. Hoar, namely the director of Umbrella Academy and Doctor Who, is part of the gay community as well. He says in an interview: “Before I came on board, Russell had said he wanted a gay director to tell the story, because he wanted to make sure that the camera was looking at the right things.”

Indeed, it is no doubt that Hoar does know what “the right things” are. He lived through the crisis of AIDS in the 80s firsthand and, most importantly, as a gay man. His personal experience is integral to the remarkable production.

That the show is produced by Red Production Company, we can see a pattern here. The team-up of Davies, Red Production Company, and Channel 4 seems to guarantee a high-quality LGBTQ television series. Back in 1999, this relationship made the controversial drama series Queer as Folk happen, with a sequel released a year later. Who would have thought after 20 years, these three would give us yet another queer TV series to binge-watch?

Queer representation aside, the show was released a week before the National HIV Testing Week. This has led to an astonishing four times higher rate of people ordering HIV tests compared to previous years. Thanks to the fight against HIV, it is no longer a “gay disease” or a “death sentence”. 

If you’ve not yet had enough 80’s queer representation, there’s another film you will not want to miss. 

Now available on Netflix, Your Name Engraved Herein is a Taiwanese LGBTQ film released in 2020. 

The film is set in 1987, when martial law had just been lifted in Taiwan. It also shows the “sin” from the 80s – two teenage guys falling in love with each other in the homophobic era. I promise it is not as cliché as it sounds as the story is inspired by the director, Patrick Liu’s own story.

Your Name Engraved Herein. [Image: Netflix]

Liu started his directing career in 1994, from music videos to TV series, stage plays to films. Finally in 2020, he made this film, not only for the LGBTQ community, but also for himself. Being named as “a new classic of LGBTQ cinema” by Time, he said: “Originally, my intention wasn’t to make a gay film, it was to make a personal film.” He continued, “This is about my first love, and my first love happened to be a story of a boy liking another boy.”

Since it is his high school love story, Liu asked producer Arthur Chu, who is also the founder of Oxygen Film Corporation, to work with him as they went to the same high school. Having the same reason as to why Davies got Hoar as the director of It’s a Sin, Chu is familiar with Liu’s story, and hence he knows “the right things” to show. 

This critically acclaimed film was released more than a year after Taiwan officially became  the first place in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage. It acts as a reminder, while celebrating this huge step after 30 years, how strenuous it is and has been for the LGBTQ community to fight for equality. 

Both It’s a Sin and Your Name Engraved Herein, while being released on opposite sides of the globe, carry out the same message authentically – the biased stigma against the LGBTQ community.