Lockdown three might feel like another long slog, but at least there are plenty of new TV series on the way to keep us entertained. 

From the BBC’s adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s Pursuit of Love to ITV’s true-crime-inspired The Pembrokeshire Murders, TV is our best friend once more in the pandemic. 

And over on Channel 4, It’s A Sin is the gripping new show that everybody will be talking about. 

Acclaimed screenwriter and producer Russell T Davies (Years and Years, Queer As Folk) brings us an incredibly important story about the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. It’s A Sin examines the lives of a group of young gay men who are hit by the outbreak of a new deadly virus, HIV, after they move to London during the 1980s.

And Olly Alexander, who stars in the series as Ritchie, has just talked about the show’s timely message about misinformation. 

In a clip shown on this week’s The Graham Norton Show, we see Alexander’s character denying the AIDS crisis. 

“The whole thing is a pack of lies. Do you want to know the truth,” he says to his friends. “You want to know what it really is? AIDS? It’s a racket, it’s a money-making scheme for drug companies.

“Do you seriously think there is an illness that only kills gay men? It can calculate that you’re gay and kill you, but only if you’re gay and no one else? Hmm.”

After watching the clip, Alexander talked to Norton about the worrying parallels between the misinformation being shared about AIDS then and the misinformation being shared about Covid-19 now.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “We finished filming a year ago and then when the pandemic started happening, people were saying things and there were all these crazy rumours about where it came from, where is was ‘made’.

“My character was saying the same lines, and you know, this is a period show about the 80s! It blew my mind.”

He added: “It’s so interesting how history repeats itself like that, and how misinformation is so prevalent and is really a problem.”

It’s just another reason why we’re so intrigued about this series and can’t wait for it to come out.

It’s A Sin starts on Channel 4 on 22 January.

Images: Channel 4