It's a Sin

Five episodes, one per year and then some, following a group of friends who move to London in 1981 and share a flat they call the Pink Palace. The first hour is euphoric — the parties, the freedom, the sheer relief of arriving. Then the news reports start.

Davies wrote it about people he knew, and it shows in the details: the shame that made families lie on death certificates, the friends who did the nursing, the mother in the last episode. Olly Alexander and Lydia West are extraordinary, and Keeley Hawes gets a final scene that is almost unwatchable. It sent UK HIV testing to a record high the week it aired.