From the nights in the Blitz to chart-topping hits, Kevin Hegge’s far-reaching documentary, which closes this year’s BFI Flare, features scores of influential figures from ‘80s London’s burgeoning New Romantic scene.
Divine performing at Heaven in 1981
Credit: David Corio/Redferns
It’s A Sin, which begins tonight on Channel 4, follows a group of gay men in Eighties London as the HIV/Aids crisis comes to define their lives. The vibrant and profoundly moving series begins in 1981, two years after entrepreneur Jeremy Norman opened groundbreaking gay nightclub Heaven in the arches beneath Charing Cross station. For the show’s writer-creator Russell T Davies, it was a no-brainer to include a few scenes set in this fabulously cavernous space that was once frequented by Freddie Mercury and Boy George. “How could I not? This is gay London in the Eighties. Heaven was compulsory,” says Davies, a former Doctor Who showrunner who also created the seminal series Queer as Folk.