What telly progs are you bingeing on?

[tigger123]

3 minutes ago, parsonjack said:

Just binged the last 3 Eps of 'It's A Sin' and me Mrs P are in bits.  Heartwrenching, but sublimely touching in equal amounts.

#BeMoreJill 

Has anyone got Times paywall access and could post this please?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/its-a-sin-star-lydia-west-on-the-hit-channel-4-drama-its-a-celebration-of-life-mwcvqg2pb

I genuinely think it might be the best drama I’ve ever seen. Binged it yesterday and can’t stop thinking about it, truly breathtaking but heartbreaking story telling

[parsonjack]

1 minute ago, tigger123 said:

I genuinely think it might be the best drama I’ve ever seen. Binged it yesterday and can’t stop thinking about it, truly breathtaking but heartbreaking story telling

Yes exactly.....it's going to stay with us for a while I think.  

[st dan]

5 minutes ago, tigger123 said:

I genuinely think it might be the best drama I’ve ever seen. Binged it yesterday and can’t stop thinking about it, truly breathtaking but heartbreaking story telling

I agree, and what I was even more impressed with was the fact that the majority of the main cast didn’t really have any acting experience in TV or film (that I can see on IMDb anyway) and thought they were all exceptional throughout. 

[Ryan1984]

If you want something light and funny after It’s a Sin, Dead Pixels is worth a go.

[Wellyboot]

I watched the whole of Its a Sin yesterday after work. It was so lovely but so, so heartbreaking. I sobbed like a baby, cant stop thinking about it.

La! X

[Quark]

Caught up on Wandavision.

Hot damn that's the good shizzle.

Also feeling happy with myself that my thinking about where it was heading was pretty much on the money. Little things to keep us happy these days 😄

[Chapple12345]

Only seen 3 episodes of Its a Sin so far but I cant stop thinking about it, the characters and their stories are so touching, tragic and poignant. Russell T Davies is truly the greatest writer of his generation, such a versatile writer and tells such incredible stories 

[Mr.Tease]

Started re-watching Prisoner Cell block h (full eps on YouTube but I have it on dvd), which I used to stay up late and watch on school nights- perfect for these days of lockdown😂

[maelzoid]

42 minutes ago, Chapple12345 said:

Only seen 3 episodes of Its a Sin so far but I cant stop thinking about it, the characters and their stories are so touching, tragic and poignant. Russell T Davies is truly the greatest writer of his generation, such a versatile writer and tells such incredible stories 

How does it compare with Years & Years? Which I thought was terrible.

[Chapple12345]

3 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

How does it compare with Years & Years? Which I thought was terrible.

I loved Years & Years to bits but I think they arent very comparable, both were equally good at telling their own stories imo

[4519dennis]

t’s a Sin star Lydia West on the hit Channel 4 drama: ‘It’s a celebration of life’

 

From ‘unfulfilled’ office PA to star of the most talked-about show of the moment — the actress tells Scarlett Russell how she did it

MARK ARRIGO

Scarlett Russell

 

Sunday January 31 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

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There have been a few “pinch-me” moments in Lydia West’s short but impressive acting career; the kind some actors wait years for and never achieve. In three years and with only six credits, she has been offered roles she never auditioned for, her name appears alongside Uma Thurman, Emma Thompson and Céline Dion and, to top it all off, last year Michaela Coelrecognised her in the street. “I’d just seen I May Destroy You and was obsessed with her,” West tells me. “I was in Hackney, walking to Tesco, she walked past and I shouted, ‘Michaela!’ She was like, ‘Er, hi?’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry, we don’t know each other but I just want to say that I May Destroy You has changed lives and you are amazing.’ She was like, ‘Thank you so much. Wait, were you in Years and Years?’ I was like, ‘Yes, but this isn’t about me!’ We chatted. She’s an icon.”

I May Destroy You was one of the biggest TV shows of 2020, while Years and Years was one of the best of 2019, a British drama set in the future with West playing the “transhuman” teenager Bethany alongside Thompson and Russell Tovey. Now she’s starring in one of the shows that will define 2021. It’s a Sin is a searingly provocative, funny and moving drama following a group of friends in London in the 1980s, living promiscuously and excessively against the backdrop of the HIV/Aids crisis. Written by the multi-Bafta-winning Russell T Davies (who also created Years and Years and Queer as Folk) it features cameos from Stephen Fry and Neil Patrick Harris and blistering performances from its young, up-and-coming cast, including the frontman of the band Years & Years, Olly Alexander, as the lead character Ritchie. West plays his best friend, Jill, a character based on one of Davies’s own best friends, the actress Jill Nalder who plays West’s mum on the show. It’s not a bad run for West, an actress with no formal acting qualifications and who four years ago was working as a PA in a cryptocurrency company.

“I was so unfulfilled,” West says of her former career. “No creativity, it was stifling and I just knew it wasn’t right.” Alongside her day job, she turned her attention to acting. She missed the creativity — she had always wanted to be a dancer but an injury at 15 meant she ended up studying business instead. At evenings and weekends, she took drama classes at the renowned Identity School of Acting in London (famous alumni include Letitia Wright and John Boyega). Weren’t you exhausted? “Yes! I worked nonstop. I’ve always been very active. I just made it work.” She soon got the role on Years and Years and promptly quit her office job. When the show launched on the BBC, and HBO in America, West’s career skyrocketed. “I was offered a role in one of the biggest shows of last year, I won’t say what it was” — Normal People, I wonder? I Hate Suzie? — “but I was also offered a part in Dracula [the BBC mini-series that aired at the start of 2020] and I chose Dracula because it was a better part and I loved everything about it.”

West with Olly Alexander in It’s a Sin

ROSS FERGUSON

She then got her first film role, the romantic comedy Text for You, filmed last November in the UK with Priyanka Chopra-Jonas and Céline Dion. Next up is a series for Apple TV+ called Suspicion, a crime thriller about the kidnapping of a prominent businesswoman’s son co-starring Uma Thurman. “It’s like, A-lister after A-lister, who are you going to give me next?” West laughs.

It’s a Sin is what will mark West out, though. As Jill she plays the matriarch of the show, taking care of many gay men, who throughout the 1980s were rapidly being infected with HIV. West, 27 and born in 1993, knew nothing about the Aids pandemic before reading the script. In her research she spent a lot of time with Nalder, a woman she calls “extraordinary and inspirational”, watched Pose, Paris Is Burning, Angels in America, “any Aids drama I could get my hands on”, and spoke to HIV-positive friends. “It completely opened my eyes to the trauma and stigma these men faced and the allies who supported them.”

West is speaking to me over Zoom (how else?) from the flat she shares with her older sister in Walthamstow, east London. Brought up in Barnet, she’s part of a close family, one of three siblings, and her parents live near by, also in Walthamstow. “My parents are big Eighties fans. I grew up with a lot of Eighties music, Luther Vandross and the like,” West says. Her mum is an NHS nurse who worked with Aids patients in the 1980s and came out of four months of retirement to work with Covid-19 patients. “She’s a legend,” West says. “Back then she wasn’t going out to the clubs like Jill, she didn’t have gay friends. She met my father young, they were married early, so it was a different Eighties experience, but she did tell me about the fashion and music and her life then. It was a similar experience speaking to Jill [Nalder], in that people who wanted to help all faced the same kind of thing — judgment and stigma. My mum said she had no idea what was going on, she just saw lots of sick men dying.”

We speak a week before It’s a Sin started, though the buzz around it is already palpable. I watched all five episodes back to back and cried through much of it, but West stresses that this isn’t a show about despair: “Russell [T Davies] said, ‘It’s easy to play shame and dread but that’s not what I want; I want you to play the joy.’ That’s why we call it a celebratory drama because it’s a celebration of life, and Eighties culture embodies that. It was a horrendous period to be a part of, but I had a deep desire to be alive in that time, to have lived in the way that these characters lived and loved. Liberating, fun, sex, joy, the music, the fashion. It was a revolutionary time.”

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The show spans ten years and one of the loveliest parts of it is watching how the main characters develop. Ritchie and Jill take centre stage for much of it, but then there’s Roscoe, loud, proud and cheeky, played by Omari Douglas; quiet and sexy Ash (Nathaniel Curtis) and sweet, well-meaning Colin (Callum Scott Howells). Davies recently made headlines by stressing the importance of gay actors playing gay characters. He told the Radio Times: “I’m not being woke about this but I feel strongly that if I cast someone in a story, they are not there to ‘act gay’. You wouldn’t cast someone able-bodied and put them in a wheelchair, you wouldn’t black someone up.”

Off screen the boys and West have become firm friends. “We’re all on a Whatsapp group called the Pink Palace [the name they call their house in the show, based on the real house Nalder lived in],” West says. “If it’s bedtime and I’ve not spoken to them, something’s wrong. All those boys are so great, I love them.”

 

 

[Kalopsia]

28 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

How does it compare with Years & Years? Which I thought was terrible.

Not very comparable. 

I can say that It’s a Sin is beautifully written and superbly acted. I can't stop thinking about it and all the lives lost in that time period. I've watched it alone and with my parents, both of their responses from people who lived through the time period has been quite amazing. Please give it a chance if you're interested. 

La🎶

[gigpusher]

3 minutes ago, Kalopsia said:

Not very comparable. 

I can say that It’s a Sin is beautifully written and superbly acted. I can't stop thinking about it and all the lives lost in that time period. I've watched it alone and with my parents, both of their responses from people who lived through the time period has been quite amazing. Please give it a chance if you're interested. 

La🎶

Yes I'd say it's more comparable to Bob & Rose and Queer As Folk than to Years & Years although I loved them all. I do think Russell T Davies is a genius. 

[maelzoid]

^^^ I thought that actress' performance in Years & Years was just dreadful - one of the worse things about the show...

[Kalopsia]

43 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

^^^ I thought that actress' performance in Years & Years was just dreadful - one of the worse things about the show...

I'm not sure which actress you're referring too I'm afraid. 

The main cast of It’s a Sin put on superb performances, I've just checked and can't see any crossover between the two so you've nothing to worry about in that respect 🙂

[maelzoid]

10 minutes ago, Kalopsia said:

I'm not sure which actress you're referring too I'm afraid. 

The main cast of It’s a Sin put on superb performances, I've just checked and can't see any crossover between the two so you've nothing to worry about in that respect 🙂

Lydia West covered in that profile. She played the "transhuman" daughter in Years & Years. Terrible performance.

But that's not to say she's a bad actress. Script and direction (and to a lesser extent editing) are as much responsible for a bad performance as what an actor does, so I wouldn't hold it against them.

[Kalopsia]

30 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

Lydia West covered in that profile. She played the "transhuman" daughter in Years & Years. Terrible performance.

But that's not to say she's a bad actress. Script and direction (and to a lesser extent editing) are as much responsible for a bad performance as what an actor does, so I wouldn't hold it against them.

Oooops my bad! Clearly still not woken up today. 

I thought she was great in it's a sin but I'm no expert in this field I just know what I enjoy. 😂

[SwedgeAntilles]

Finished S1 of Westworld last night, great TV. Pretty gutted that I know I'm almost certainly going to be disappointed with what comes next.

[incident]

3 minutes ago, SwedgeAntilles said:

Finished S1 of Westworld last night, great TV. Pretty gutted that I know I'm almost certainly going to be disappointed with what comes next.

I wouldn't worry about that just yet. S2 is really good.

[priest17]

Just finished The Sopranos. I'd heard a lot about the ending and it did not disappoint ahah. 

Genuinely though the show was fuckin A, I loved it. Played myself going through it so fast.

[gigpusher]

Just now, priest17 said:

Just finished The Sopranos. I'd heard a lot about the ending and it did not disappoint ahah. 

Genuinely though the show was fuckin A, I loved it. Played myself going through it so fast.

Is this on any streaming service? It's one I started once when a colleague lent me the first box set. She was intending on lending them all to me but she went off long term sick and never came back. 

[priest17]

5 minutes ago, gigpusher said:

Is this on any streaming service? It's one I started once when a colleague lent me the first box set. She was intending on lending them all to me but she went off long term sick and never came back. 

I watched it on someone's SKY Go so I imagine it'll be on now tv. Worth stumping up the funds for for a month to blast through it if you ask me.

[philipsteak]

9 minutes ago, gigpusher said:

Is this on any streaming service? It's one I started once when a colleague lent me the first box set. She was intending on lending them all to me but she went off long term sick and never came back. 

It's on Now TV, on Sky Atlantic

[gigpusher]

Just now, priest17 said:

I watched it on someone's SKY Go so I imagine it'll be on now tv. Worth stumping up the funds for for a month to blast through it if you ask me.

It is certainly one for the list. 

[gigpusher]

22 minutes ago, philipsteak said:

It's on Now TV, on Sky Atlantic

I don't have that but I believe you can do a month trial. I might do it when I'm not so busy at work and I am reading less. I'd need to watch quite a few every night to get through it in a month.