It's a Sin

Omari Douglas on It’s A Sin, working with Russell T Davies and discovering Britain’s historic queer trailblazers

Omari Douglas (credit: Phil Sharp)

At drama school, Douglas and his friends would make a big event of watching Cucumber, Russell T Davies’ exploration of 21st cenutry gay life. Now, the theatre actor has landed his first ever TV role as one of the lead characters in Davies’ explosive new drama, It’s A Sin, and he couldn’t be more excited.

“It’s Russell T Davies, he has such an iconic body of work,” he effuses. “And, of course, we're representing a very important community at a very important time. So, it's a huge, huge honour to have been a part of it.”

Channel 4 commissions new five-part queer Russell T Davies drama Tip Toe

Russell T Davies, a white man in his sixties, looks into the camera, smiling, against a grey backdrop

Tip Toe will focus on how prejudice is beginning to creep back into queer people’s lives. Leo and Clive are next door neighbours in Manchester, with the former running a bar on Canal Street and the latter an electrician with two sons. Gradually, relations sour and tensions rise between the neighbours, as opinions replace facts and tolerance proves a dwindling resource.

The five-part series will unite the team behind Queer as Folk, including executive producer Nicola Shindler and director Peter Hoar.

BBC releases trailer and release date for Keeley Hawes drama Miss Austen

Keeley Hawes, a white woman in her forties, holds a sheet while looking out the window, smiling and wearing a blue 19th century everyday-wear dress

It’s 1830, and Jane Austen has been dead for over a decade. Alive and kicking, though, is her sister Cassandra, who will later take the decision to burn a huge portion of Jane’s letters. The four-part series, an adaptation of Gill Hornsby’s novel of the same name, uses Cassandra’s decision to explore the friendship, romance and regrets that shaped the Austens’ lives.

Alex Mahon: fearlessly being 4

Ask Alex Mahon to name the best bits about her job and without hesitation she says it’s when outstanding programmes receive the recognition they deserve. It could be a breakthrough comedy such as Derry Girls or Russell T Davies’s bittersweet It’s a Sin – or the recent Cannes Grand Prix winner, Film4’s The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s German-language Holocaust film based on the Martin Amis novel.

Working Lives: Editor Sarah Brewerton

What does the job involve?

I take all the material the director shoots and figure out how to tell the story in the most compelling and emotionally gripping way. There’s this misunderstanding that an editor’s job is simply to cut out the bad bits; it’s the opposite – you’re actually building something.

What editing software do you use?

I started just after the transition from film and I’ve always used Avid.

Do you regret missing out on film?

Helena Bonham Carter to star in Russell T Davies’ new Noele Gordon drama

The series will explore the powerful reign and fall from grace of Gordon, the soap star and Queen of the Midlands.

Gordon became one of the most famous people in Britain playing the flame-haired widow Meg Richardson in the long-running soap opera, Crossroads.

But in 1981, at her and the show’s peak of success, she was fired without warning nor any explanation, despite appearing on it for 18 years.

Privatising Channel 4 is back on the agenda

Credit: Channel 4

On 18 November 1996, Hansard noted a parliamentary question from John Whittingdale, MP for Maldon: “Will my Hon Friend congratulate Channel 4 on its success in avoiding recourse to the ‘safety net’ and on making a profit last year of £128m? Does that not demonstrate that it is possible for Channel 4 to meet its remit and to operate commercially? Will he therefore consider its privatisation at the first opportunity?”