'It's A Sin' is the best miniseries Russell T Davies has ever written and that's saying something.
After all, this is the man who created the groundbreaking Channel 4 drama 'Queer as Folk' in 1999.
The five episode miniseries is better than 'The Second Coming' - his ITV drama in 2003 with Christopher Eccleston about a Manchester man who might be the second coming of Jesus.
It is better than 'Cucumber,' 'Banana' and 'Tofu' - his three ambitious, simultaneous Channel 4, E4 and 4oD drama series in 2015 about LGBT life.
It even tops his three-part miniseries on the Jeremy Thorpe affair 'A Very English Scandal' for BBC1 in 2018 and his episodes of 'Dr Who' in the Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and Billie Piper era.
That's how good 'It's A Sin' is.
Set between 1981 to 1991, the Channel 4 drama follows the lives of five 18 year olds as they navigate the harsh reality of AIDS at a time when society was still intolerant about gay life.
Olly Alexander of the synth pop trio Years and Years is Ritchie Tozer, a teenager from the Isle of Wight who heads to London initially to study law at university until he catches sight of Nathaniel Curtis's Ash Mukerjee.
Lydia West's drama student Jill Baxter notices, befriends Ritchie and introduces him to Ash who during their first tryst gives him a quick lesson in cleanliness.
Around the same time, Callum Scott Howells' rather square Colin arrives from Wales to begin an apprenticeship in a tailor's in Saville Row.
He boards with a family whose son plays football and who he quite fancies.
However Colin also has to negotiate a rather lecherous married boss, Nicholas Blane's Mr Hart who insists on him stripping off his shirt at the end of the first day to demonstrate how he should clean himself.
Colin is rescued by Neil Patrick Harris' salesman Henry Coltrane who takes him to a pub frequented by other gay men but assures Colin: "You don't have to worry about me, I'm not remotely interested.
"I live in Hackney with a very nice man from the Algarve and we've been together for decades, so you're perfectly safe with me, Colin."
Around the same time, Omari Douglas' Roscoe Babatunde has incurred the wrath of his religiously conservative Nigerian parents for being openly gay and they pray at the dinner table for him to be cured.
With his Bible thumping dad, Delroy Brown's Oscar planning to take his son to Nigeria, his sister Shaniqua Okwok's Solly gives him money to escape from the family home and start a new life elsewhere in London.
Roscoe, however, leaves in style.
Ritchie quits law to study drama much to the displeasure of his father, Shaun Dooley's Clive Tozer, while his mum Keeley Hawes' Valerie assumes he is in a relationship with Jill.
Roscoe, who works in a pub popular with gay men, Ritchie, Jill and Ash become friends and rent out a house which they call the Pink Palace.
Colin attends a flamboyant party there and soon becomes part of the gang which also includes David Carlyle's gay Glaswegian, Gregory 'Gloria' Finch.
A very confident Ritchie is in his element in the Pink Palace, having loads of flings with other gay men.
However he is unable to discuss his sexuality when he visits his family in the Isle of Wight.
Soon, rumours start to circulate about a virus striking down gay men in the US.
And it isn't long before it hits British shores and starts picking off Davies' characters as if they are in a horror movie.
Audiences will be particularly struck in Davies' account of AIDS in the 1980s how similar the dynamics were to Covid in the 2020s.
The rumour mill kicks into gear about the origins of the virus and so we hear it came from the jungle, it transferred from monkeys, the Russians were responsible, it was created in a laboratory.
Homosexuals, haemophiliacs, Haitians and heroin users are rumoured to be vulnerable, promoting Ritchie to dismissively quip: "Like there's a disease which just targets the letter h.
"Who is it going to get next - people from Hartlepool?"
But when the grim reality hits, it hits them all very hard.
And while a UK Government campaign will urge members of the public "don't die of ignorance," all they encounter is ignorance as patients are initially locked away in wards and are left to die alone.
With huge measures of humour, Davies brilliantly conveys the perils, the pleasures and occasional pain of gay men as they tried to be themselves in the 1980s.
Frank in its depiction of sex, many of its characters nevertheless conceal their sexuality from their families - in some cases, only coming out when they are at death's door.
It is a measure of how great the writing is that every death is deeply felt by the audience and the treatment of those struck down seems unbearably cruel.
Vibrantly directed by Peter Hoar with a fantastic 1980s soundtrack that includes The Eurythmics, Kim Wilde, Erasure, OMD, New Order and Kate Bush, 'It's A Sin' feels like a gay version of 'Our Friends in the North'.
And if there is any justice, it will be a star making vehicle for its young leads in the same way Peter Flannery's 1996 BBC2 series was for Christopher Eccleston, Gina McKee, Mark Frost and Daniel Craig.
Olly Alexander sparkles as Ritchie, a teenager who quickly comes out of his shell and leads a promiscuous life only to crawl back into it when he returns to his family in the Isle of Wight.
As Roscoe, Omari Douglas is terrifically larger than life from the off but also canny in networking London's elite.
Lydia West is excellent as the kind hearted Jill whose friendship with her gay housemates develops into AIDS activism.
Callum Scott Howells brilliantly brings an innocence to the part of Colin, a Welsh lamb set loose in London's jungle.
Nathaniel Curtis offers more than just good looks as Ash, while David Carlyle's disintegration early in the show is disheartening.
It is a testament to Davies and the quality of his script that so many established names appear in supporting roles.
Shaun Dooley and Keeley Hawes are excellent as Ritchie's parents - the latter delivering a jaw dropping performance in the final episode that explains why she took the part.
Neil Patrick Harris memorably sketches the part of Colin's gay Saville Row mentor.
Stephen Fry pops up as a Thatcherite Conservative MP who is having an affair with Roscoe.
Tracy Ann Oberman is excellent as Ritchie's tough but fiercely loyal agent Carol Carter who is seeing a lot of promising young actors on her books fall away because of AIDS.
Gary Lewis turns in a typically hard as nails, yet poignant performance as Gregory's dad in Glasgow, while Ashley McGuire is brilliant as a very patient nurse in an AIDS ward and Ruth Sheen has a striking cameo as the mother of a patient.
Special mention too should go to Shaniqua Okwok as Roscoe's sister, Delroy Brown and Michelle Greenidge as his God fearing parents, Neil Ashton who plays an AIDS activist called Grizzle, Nathan Sussex as another activist, Andria Doherty as Colin's kind hearted mum and Nicholas Blane as the seedy predator Mr Hart.
'It's A Sin' works because it feels firmly rooted in truth.
Every character, every situation feels like it has been absorbed from real events.
As a result, Davies has created a flawless drama which enables audiences outside the LGBT community to understand what it was like for gay people living their lives in a culture of ignorance, insensitivity, intolerance and hypocrisy during the 1980s.
Its characters are beautifully fleshed out, flawed individuals - making in some cases some catastrophic mistakes.
But it is also a powerful argument for compassion in the face of adversity.
That is something we all need to embrace in a society that is still far too addicted to rage in the Covid era.
Truthful, poignant and at times very funny, 'It's A Sin' gets the year of television drama off to a searing start in 2021.
Davies should bask in the enthusiasm it has already attracted on social media.
It will also take one heck of a series in 2021 to emerge as its equal.
(It's A Sin' was broadcast on Channel 4 from January 22-February 19, 2020 and was made available in the US on HBO Max and on the Australian streaming service Stan from January 23)
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