Big recommend for this on iPlayer. I decided to watch it because I realised there was a gap in my knowledge when it came to AIDS and the original outbreak in the UK. I do remember the scary adverts on telly and suchlike, but didn't know particularly the facts around it, and I was young at the time.
This is three episodes of an hour each, starting in 1981 when the disease was brought over to the UK from the USA, going all the way through to 1996.
The main narrative device (as per the title) is they found a load of audio tapes that had interviews with AIDS sufferers from back in the 80s on them. They play the interviews back but have a contemporary actor do lip-syncing to the tape. The people whose voices you hear are dead.
They also have contemporary interviews with people who were there at the time, doctors, nurses, researchers, the people who set up the Terrence Higgins trust, that sort of thing.
Honestly, it's pretty much two and three quarter hours of heartbreak, until finally, towards the end of the final episode which takes us to 1996, the scientists discovered the combination of drugs that could keep AIDS at bay indefinitely, which whilst not technically a 'cure', suppresses the virus to such an extent that even those who are HIV positive can lead entirely normal lives, including having unprotected sex (and not pass the virus on).
There's much to get annoyed about, like the vile, disgusting way the gay community was vilified and demonised, particularly by the gutter press, but against that backdrop the strength and courage of those at the epicentre is something to be hugely admired.
SPOILER ALERT - Towards the back end of the third episode, I'd been used to seeing text on screen along the lines of 'David died in 1986, three years after he recorded this interview', time and time again, you're hearing the voices of people who died horrible deaths in their twenties and thirties. (I didn't realise quite how cruelly varied AIDS could be in terms of its devastation, for example there were young men in their twenties, dying with advanced dementia, who didn't even recognise their partners as they slipped away.)
So another interview came to an end, and I was waiting for the text that read 'Mark died in 1987.... etc', but instead the screen fades to black, and then as it fades back up, Mark walks into shot and sits down, he's still alive, he lived long enough for the treatment to be made available in 1996, and he finishes off his story in person.
Then it does this for another two or three people, and you're so used to everyone being dead, just seeing that some of them made it and are still alive is a blessed relief.
It's not easiest of watches, but I'm glad I gave it three hours of my time, and I feel I understand something now that I didn't before.
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