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'It's a Sin' on HBO Max shows an utterly devastating view of AIDS in 1980s London
Peter-Astrid Kane
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Lydia West as Jill Baxter and Nathaniel Curtis as Ash Mukherjee in "It's a Sin" on HBO Max.Ben Blackall/HBO Max
“La!”
Sung cheerfully, that one syllable occurs again and again in HBO Max’s "It’s a Sin" as a marker of group identity. Set in London in 1981 (but filmed in Manchester), the show stars a group of gay men and their straight den mother who utter "la" to one another in every possible context. It's Liverpool slang, but sun-spoken in their staccato, theatrical way, it's more like "aloha." It functions as hello and goodbye, but also “I’m here for you” and “I see you” and “I’m going out for the night, and when I get home, there’s a good chance something terrible may have happened and I will need you to help me get through it.”