Television series

It's a Sin

It's a Sin is Russell T Davies's blistering, tender chronicle of a group of gay friends arriving in 1980s London, watching their world reshape itself around a virus nobody yet understands. It's funny, sexy and devastating within the same scene, grief arriving mid-joke. Essential, difficult viewing for anyone who wants to understand how fast joy can curdle into fear, and how friendship survives it anyway.

TVMaze rating7.6

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Pose2018

Ballroom culture in 1980s-90s New York, told with the same blend of glitter and grief — a chosen family fighting for dignity while AIDS stalks every episode, trans joy centred at last.

But Runs three seasons deep and the tonal whiplash between camp and tragedy can feel exhausting if you're not braced for it.

Pose poster

Angels in America2003

Tony Kushner's furious, visionary epic — angels, Reagan-era politics and AIDS collide across six hours stacked with a cast (Streep, Pacino, Thompson) working at full power.

But It's theatrical, dense and unapologetically strange — magical realism and long monologues aren't for everyone.

Angels in America poster

Philadelphia1993

The film that brought AIDS discrimination into mainstream cinemas — Tom Hanks won an Oscar playing a lawyer fighting to be believed while dying.

But Earnest and a little safe by today's standards, built to persuade a nervous 90s audience rather than shock one.

Philadelphia poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

How to Survive a Plague2012

Same fight, same decade, but nonfiction: the people It's a Sin fictionalises, filmed while they were still fighting and still dying.

Built entirely from archival footage, this documentary puts you inside ACT UP meetings as they invent modern medical activism in real time — the actual rage It's a Sin dramatises.

But No actors, no score doing the emotional work for you — it demands you sit with real anger and real footage of dying men.

How to Survive a Plague poster
More like this (8)

The Normal Heart2014

Larry Kramer's own rage, adapted with Mark Ruffalo as an activist screaming at a world that refuses to listen — same era, same fury, New York instead of London.

But Stagey and shouty by design — it plays as an argument as much as a drama, and it never lets up.

The Normal Heart poster

Milk2008

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the politician whose life and death predate the AIDS years but built the movement that had to fight through them.

But A biopic in the classic mould, more concerned with political victory than the private devastation It's a Sin sits inside.

Milk poster

Dallas Buyers Club2013

Matthew McConaughey's transformation into a Texan hustler turned accidental AIDS activist, smuggling drugs the system wouldn't approve — grit and dark comedy in equal measure.

But Criticised since for centering a straight man's story inside a crisis that devastated gay communities most.

Dallas Buyers Club poster

BPM (Beats per Minute)2017

French ACT UP activists debate, dance and die in a film that captures meeting-room fury and nightclub euphoria with equal force — genuinely great filmmaking.

But Subtitled and structurally loose, with long argument scenes before it earns its emotional gut-punch.

BPM (Beats per Minute) poster

Holding the Man2015no page yet

An Australian love story spanning fifteen years, from schoolboy crush to the epidemic's arrival — tender, specific, and criminally under-seen outside Australia.

But Low-key and unglamorous where It's a Sin is vivid; some will find the pace too gentle.

Longtime Companion1989

One of the first films to take the epidemic seriously while it was still happening — a quiet, devastating group portrait made without the comfort of hindsight.

But Dated in style and pace, low-budget late-80s indie filmmaking that lacks the polish audiences expect now.

Longtime Companion poster

The Fly1986

Genre transposition: the same 1986 terror of a body betraying itself and a world recoiling from contagion, filtered through science fiction instead of social drama.

Cronenberg's body-horror masterpiece about a man's cells turning against him was read instantly as an AIDS parable — made in the exact panic year Ritchie arrives in London.

But It's a horror film, gross and upsetting in a completely different register — no comfort, no found family, just dread.

The Fly poster

Parting Glances1986no page yet

Made in real time rather than reconstructed decades later: this is what an ordinary Tuesday looked like inside the story It's a Sin tells retrospectively.

A quiet, funny, unfussy day-in-the-life indie about a Manhattan gay couple, made the same year the crisis was peaking — no hindsight, no swelling score, just people living.

But Tiny budget, loose plot, and a very 80s indie pace — it whispers where It's a Sin sings.

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