It's A Sin: An Irish perspective on the superb TV drama about gay life in the 1980s 

London was a very different place to Ireland, but LGBT people of a certain vintage from this country will find many familiarities in Russell T Davies' enjoyable and heartbreaking series 

It's A Sin on Channel 4. 

Twenty-one years after Queer As Folk erupted on our television screens with unflinchingly honest and exuberantly transgressive depictions of gay male sexuality, author Russell T Davies’ companion piece, It’s A Sin, mines the first decade of the Aids pandemic.

The five-part series, currently airing on Channel 4, follows the adventures of a group of gay men and a female flatmate, as they come of age in early 1980s London. Broadcast during another pandemic, the show’s launch had an ‘eventness’ rarely seen these days. and the box-set has gone on to become C4’s biggest ever. It’s not hard to see why: rock-solid writing with immaculate casting; and a playlist of '80s Brit pop and sad bangers, suffused with a distinct visual style.