Hearing that a new Russell T Davies drama is on its way to TV makes the world that bit better a place. We’re chuffed to report then, that The Boys, a five-part series written by Davies is coming to Channel 4 almost twenty years after the arrival of his ground-breaking series about gay life Queer As Folk.
A modern period drama set across the 1980s, The Boys tells the story of three characters Ritchie, Roscoe and Colin, and their experience of the AIDS crisis. Here’s the official Channel 4 synopsis:
Ritchie, Roscoe and Colin are young lads, strangers at first, leaving home at 18 and heading off to London in 1981 with hope and ambition and joy… and walking straight into a plague that most of the world ignores. Year by year, episode by episode, their lives change, as the mystery of a new virus starts as a rumour, then a threat, then a terror, and then something that binds them together in the fight.
It’s the story of their friends, lovers and families too, especially Jill, the girl who loves them and helps them, and galvanises them in the battles to come. Together they will endure the horror of the epidemic, the pain of rejection and the prejudices that gay men faced throughout the decade.
There are terrible losses and wonderful friendships. And complex families, pushed to the limit and beyond. This is a series that remembers the boys we lost, and celebrates those lives that burned so brightly.
These are stories Davies has long discussed telling, and finally feels ready to do so. “It’s taken me decades to build up to this,” he says in the press release. “And as time marches on, there’s a danger the story will be forgotten. So it’s an honour to write this for the ones we lost, and the ones who survived.”
More news on the series as it arrives.