It's a Sin: Part 4

 "Something's wrong with your skin..."

Four episodes in it's quite clear that this series is an extraordinary masterpiece; following Colin's death last episode we have nothing comparable here, but we have somebloody good drama where, yet again, each character gets developed and every character is three dimensional and real. RTD has had a long and distinguised career, but this is his magnum opus.

It's 1988. We get THAT advert. We get a superb bit on Section 28 where Ash also gets to point out how history and culture has erased LGBT+ people for centuries. Well, except for Mary Renault. But this is also a time where the Pink Palace gang are attending funeral after funeral in what looks like a punishing schedule. There's a powerful moment at a funeral where it's pointed out that the vicar hasn't mentioned the dead man's boyfriend, and indeed he has no rights at all.

But greed is good. Richie and Jill have got a mortgage on the Pink Palace- even if Richie has to lie about his sexual orientation; it seems, incredibly, you could be denied a mortgage for being gay. But the fact that Richie and Jill have joined the Thatcherite revolution (Richie even voted Tory!) is soundtracked, inevitably, by Yazz' "The Only Way Is Up". The soundtrack of this entire series is really rather glorious, and often clever in how it uses those well-known '80s hits that have almost become divorced from their original context.

There's a fascinating sub-plot with Roscoe, and his dalliance with a Tory MP, portrayed to perfection by Stephen Fry, who doesn't see himself as gay because he's a top. There's a perfect punchline to this whole sub-plot, and Roscoe himself is a wonderfully nuanced chaacter. I love his outburst about how he loved Colin, but Colin behaved himself, and died- so why behave?

But Richie. Oh Richie. It's implicit, after last episode and given his cautious behaviour throughout, that he is HIV positive, and it's while acting with some Daleks (ah, RTD!) that it becomes clear something is wrong and he has full- lown AIDs. He fails to tell his blood family, who seem to live in a different world, and ends up telling all his friends in the back of a police van after a defiantly awesome demonstration. And the last line is perfect. 

I'll save the real superlatives for the finale; I have high hopes.