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Russell T Davies could not have known when he made Its A Sin that it would come out during another pandemic one that has elicited an entirely different response. How bittersweet it must be for the survivors of the Aids pandemic to see the care and attention that has been given to cracking Covid.

There are a million reasons Its A Sin is so powerful, and I do not have the word count to go into them all here. It is powerful because it is full of love and it is full of joy, but to me it is powerful because it shows us the true nature of shame, and how deadly it can be. Shame, mostly born out of other peoples ignorance, is what kills. Shame is what essentially leads to the death of one character, a heartbreakingly beautiful boy who is ultimately too scared to find out if he is HIV positive, meaning the disease progresses to Aids.

During his last days, he tells his shocked mother that he is sure he has killed other men, simply by loving them. Later, his friend Jill tells her that so many of the men dying alone in Aids wards believe that, in some small way, they deserve it. That in some small way, this disease is their punishment for not being the child their parents wanted them to be.

Its tempting to see Its A Sin as a very modern period drama, to compartmentalise what happened and tell ourselves that the world has long since moved on. But the shame of Its A Sin is not that far away. While advances in science mean HIV is now an entirely manageable condition, campaigners have faced uphill battles to get preventative drugs, known as PrEP, made available on the NHS. In 2019, almost 700,000 people across the world died from Aids-related illnesses, while 38 million people were living with HIV. And a report published last year by the UN found that the Covidpandemic risks setting back the goal to end the Aids pandemic by at least 10 years. The report estimated that even a six-month disruption in HIV treatment could result in an extra 500,000 deaths in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

We must be careful, too, in believing that the kind of shameful ostracisation gay men faced in the 1980s is a thing of the past. If anything, shame has become mainstream thanks to the advent of social media, and Covid has only cemented its position as a powerful global currency. Shame is the religion that drives the culture wars. Shame is now state-sanctioned, with full-page adverts in national newspapers shaming us into not leaving the house. For many LGBTQ+ people, shame did not magically die with the repeal of Section 28 (a mere 20 years ago). And the trans rights conversation, which now dominates the media, seems powered by shame.

Its A Sin reminds us that shame is a dead end for everyone involved. It gets us nowhere. Its interesting that this show about shame has in itself been shamed, for not telling the story of all the women who died of Aids. But for me, the most powerful character was Jill (interviewed in The Telegraph last month), who shows us how powerful it is to be set free from shame. As Russell T Davies knows, the only way you kill shame is by exposing it to the light. Let this extraordinary drama be a prompt for us all to do just that.

Read more:
Shame drives the culture wars and its powerful legacy still lives on - Telegraph.co.uk