west end boys

RUSSELL T. DAVIES HEADS BACK TO THE ’80S – AND THE AIDS CRISIS…

- Gabriel Tate

Number 159 Routemaster bus is parked outside Savile Row tailors Culver & Hound, where a billboard advertises ‘Dortman Electronics’ (“Bring The Magic Home With Cinema Stereo Sound”) nearby. We are unmistakably in early ’80s London, albeit reimagined in Manchester for the purposes of a new five-part drama. Russell T. Davies, saviour of Doctor Who and now creator of It’s A Sin, laughs that “to find 1980s London in London, we’d have had to shoot in one little corner of Soho…”

The show – named after Pet Shop Boys’ operatically defiant 1987 chart-topper – focuses on four teenagers living through the decade in the shadow of Aids. Ritchie (Olly Alexander) yearns to escape the dull conservatism of the Isle of Wight; Roscoe (Omari Douglas) seeks sanctuary in London after being outed by his evangelical Nigerian parents; sensible, sheltered Colin (Callum Scott Howells) is from the Welsh valleys; and Jill (Lydia West) is their supportive and apparently unshockable confidante. The quartet end up in the Pink Palace, a London bedsit where they find community, safety and themselves.

SEE THIS IF YOU LIKED…

QUEER AS FOLK 1999-2000 Davies exploded into the public eye with the story of three men exploring Manchester’s gay scene.

SKINS: ‘PURE’ 2013 Olly Alexander’s first major role came in a two-parter in which his character stalked Hannah Murray’s Cassie.

PRIDE 2014 The unlikely true story of the 1985 alliance between striking miners and gay-rights activists was a deserved box-office smash.