The virus that caused 40 years of terror

UNFORTUNATELY, Russell T. Davies’s exceptional AIDS drama, It’s A Sin, was probably too late to be a contender.

Following the lives of a group of gay characters in the 1980s, it highlights so brilliantly the suspicion, secrecy, fear and prejudice that was as much the horror of AIDS at that time as the illness itself. Thank heavens, as nightmarish as the pandemic is, we are spared that.

Discussing the show with a gay friend, he said that when he hears people going on about the uncertainty and restrictions of Covid-19, he thinks to himself: ‘ Well I’ve been living in fear of a virus my whole life.’