It’s A Sin creator Russell T Davies has revealed there were more heartbreaking storylines viewers didn’t get to see on the hit Channel 4 drama.
The screenwriter has detailed the additional plots he’d planned, as originally the series was meant to comprise more episodes.
It would have seen Roscoe discover he had HIV later in life and Jill confronting Ritchie’s mother about her behaviour as she visited her in her old age.
Appearing on Damian Barr’s Literary Salon, Russel said: “It could’ve been eight episodes long, and there would’ve been an extra flatmate, and he would’ve had adventures. But I was offered four episodes, and that’s fine. Everything that I would’ve done kind of compacted inwards.”
Eventually the series was bumped up to five episodes, but he said there was “always meant” to be another episode set in the present day.
“It was never written, so it doesn’t exist, but it was kind of budgeted for,” he said.
“We’d catch up with Jill at the age of 55 and she’s still working in mental and sexual health. It’s too long a story to describe, but you get the feeling that she’s trapped in that world, actually.”
He said that we would have seen the character “going on cruise ships and to conference centres and singing songs on the West End with all her mates”.
Jill – who was based on one of Russell’s real-life friends who also played Jill’s mother in the show – would have also returned to Ritchie’s home on the Isle Of Wight years after his death.
“She decides to go, she goes back to the Isle of Wight to meet that family. That’s why there was a sister there, in Ritchie’s household,” Russell explained.
Visiting Ritchie’s mum Valerie in a care home, Jill would have uncovered the “sexual abuse at the heart of the Tozer household and [learned] how Valerie ended up like she did”.
After drifting apart in the interim years, Jill and Roscoe would have also reconnected.
While he did not contract HIV in the series, the additional episode would have revealed Roscoe had been diagnosed later in life.
“You know, 50 years old and he’s got the virus having escaped it all those years,” Russell said.
It’s A Sin concluded on Channel 4 earlier this month, with all five episodes still available to stream on All4.