Russell T Davies’s new drama, It’s a Sin (Channel 4), is something of a companion piece, 20 years on, to his groundbreaking masterpiece Queer as Folk. The latter was the riotous celebration of gay urban life as led by three friends broadly representing different stages of exploration as they embraced life as hot single men. In essence it was a gorgeous fantasy, designed to counteract both the historic worthiness and prejudice surrounding such depictions.

What it did not do was look much at the darkness out of which such freedom had emerged and which still shadowed the lives of its Canal Street party people. It didn’t, in short, deal with the effects of Aids on the gay community.

It’s a Sin does. Without losing any of Davies’s gusto, irreverence, joy or subtlety, it follows the lives of three young gay men, Ritchie (Olly Alexander), Roscoe (Omari Douglas) and Colin (Callum Scott Howells) who move to London. They evolve into – in Armistead Maupin’s lovely phrase – each other’s logical family (along with Ritchie’s university best friend Jill, played by Lydia West) as they commit themselves to the enjoyment of every freedom the city has to offer.

But the group arrive in 1981, just as the first reports of a new disease are making their way across the Atlantic. The shadows are starting to gather by the end of the first episode, which is mostly devoted to establishing the characters and their relationships in full measure. It is Davies’s great gift to be able to create real, flawed, entirely credible bundles of humanity and make it clear, without even momentary preachiness, how much they have to lose. Read more via Guardian