Trivia / It's a Sin

• California Doubling:
  • Manchester stood in for most of the London scenes. The location of the gang's Pink Palace is quite clearly Manchester, with it's red-brick frontage.
  • The same applies to Rhos-on-Sea and Bangor in North Wales, which stands in for Ritchie's family home in the Isle of Wight.
• The Cast Show Off: Subverted. It looks like Olly Alexander (best known as the frontman for Years And Years), is going to sing when he gets into drag as Rachel, but instead he just "sings" "La!" (which becomes a Running Gag).
• Creator-Driven Successor: To Queer as Folk (UK), Russell T Davies' drama about the Manchester gay scene, albeit set a decade earlier and tonally different.
• Fake Brit: American Neil Patrick Harris plays an English man with an accent.
• Production Posse: The second collaboration between Davies and Lydia West, who was also in Years and Years.
• The Red Stapler: After its release there was an increase in people requesting HIV tests in the UK.
• Unfinished Episode: According to Russell T Davies, in an interview with the group Tackle HIV, ^note  Broadcast on the Tackle HIV Facebook page on 29 January 2021, there were plans for a sixth episode that wasn't funded. It would have taken place in the present day to explore the current situation with HIV and AIDS, focusing on Jill Baxter; Jill would have also travelled to the Isle of Wight to look back on Richie's death and see how his family was.
• What Could Have Been: It was explained in an interview with the Radio Times, that had the series received more episodes, there would be more scenes dedicated to Colin's mother as an activist and Henry's partner Juan Pablo would have been revealed to be still alive after Henry's death.
• Working Title: Was tentatively titled The Boys while in production, then changed to Boys and finally to It's a Sin to avoid confusion with Amazon's The Boys (2019).
• Write What You Know:
  • A tragic example. Davies based the late stages of Colin's dementia on the death of his own partner, not from AIDS, but brain cancer. He agonised over whether to draw on it as inspiration, as he wasn't sure if it would upset his family, but in the end decided it was too important and he had to go through with it.
  • In general, the series is based on Davies' experiences of being a gay man in Margaret Thatcher's Britain and surviving the AIDS crisis.

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