'It's a Sin' Is One of TIME's 50 Most Underappreciated TV Shows

No TV program since Angels in America captured the scope and pain of the early AIDS crisis like this five-part drama from Queer as Folk creator and Doctor Who reviver Russell T Davies. But when it comes to style, tone, and personnel, the miniseries are about as different as two stories about the same plague can be. While Mike Nichols’ 2003 HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer-winning play was epic in every sense, from its spiritual grandeur to a cast led by Al Pacino and Meryl Streep, It’s a Sin—which made a splash on Channel 4 in the U.K. but barely seemed to ripple on HBO Max in the U.S.—thrived on intimacy. Spanning the decade between 1981 and 1991, it follows a group of initially college-aged queer men and their friends as they leave mostly intolerant homes and converge on London. The experience is exhilarating at first: clubs, parties, hookups, liberation, community. Then come the reports of a “gay cancer” afflicting otherwise healthy young men in New York and San Francisco. Inevitably, the epidemic crosses the ocean, taking the lives of some characters and turning others into dogged activists. It’s the vividness and verisimilitude with which these fictional people are dr...