It's a Sin

Set to 80s classics from Pet Shop Boys, Bronski Beat, Culture Club and Erasure, It’s a Sin was a perfect weave of joy and sorrow, and one of the most affecting TV shows I imagine we’ll watch this year.

It is a series intimately in conversation with life and death, with the possibility of youth and the injustice of quashed potential. It is celebratory of the LGBTQ community, unabashedly sexy and fun, but moving and somber when it needs to be. And it's certainly not a sin.

The series demonstrates once again Davies’ masterful control of tone, shifting in five episodes from joy to the harder-won pleasures of solidarity in the face of crisis to — finally — tragedy. ... Davies has once again made great and painful art about time’s passage, and has earned the attention of anyone who wants to learn more about what the 1980s were like for gay people — or wants to connect, deeply, with a raw and rounded humanity in all its beauty, complexity, and fleeting joy.

“It’s a Sin” offers one of the most honest, moving takes on the AIDS crisis and in its final episode delivers a searing critique of the shame that ensured the disease’s spread.

After the joy-to-horror onslaught of the first three episodes, the latter parts struggle to balance big speeches with one absolutely ridiculous (if quite cheeky) bit of anti-Thatcherite rebellion. ... At its best, though, It's a Sin brings a unique mix of poignant enthusiasm and simmering sorrow to its tale.

“It’s a Sin” is an intimate period ensemble drama about families of choice that’s in league with some of the better evocations of the dawning of AIDS in the gay community, including “Parting Glances” (with Steve Buscemi) in 1986 and “Longtime Companion” in 1989.

It’s a Sin is best when it avoids such didactic point-making, when it has yet to issue any grave conclusions. As Ritchie and the gang simply try to live their lives—generous, selfish, scared, awed, horny, in love—the series affords them the roundness denied them by aggregate assessment.