Russell T. Davies knew that a drama about the AIDS crisis was going to be a tough subject to sell to audiences. It’s one of the reasons why the first couple of episodes of It’s A Sin —which lands on HBO Max Feb.
18 —are unlike what most people would probably expect from a drama about the AIDS crisis. They’re full of love, laughs and, above all else, fun, showing its ensemble of young gay characters —brought together in London from various walks of life across the U.K. —enjoying their newfound freedom in the British capital in the early 1980s with plenty of wild parties, thrills, drunken behavior and sex.
But there’s another, arguably far more important, reason for Davies, who was 18 in 1981 when the series starts. It's a Sin was written.