Russell T Davies writing TV drama about Aids in the 1980s

Queer as Folk and Cucumber writer Russell T Davies is working on a new drama about Aids in the early 1980s called The Boys.

Davies said the project, being developed for Channel 4, tells the story about the “quiet” deaths of men who died of the disease more than 30 years ago.

The Boys is not yet written but will feature a fictionalised version of Davies and some of his friends and he said it might be one of the most personal things he has worked on.

Davies said that although the stories of eighties Aids activism, demonstrations and marches has been told, he “can’t believe” that no-one has written before about those who lived in “the bedsits” and who died on hospital wards where a “hero” friend of his helped out.

He said that having recently stared “mortality in the face” - his boyfriend was diagnosed three years ago with brain cancer - he had been looking back at his life and how he reacted to Aids.

“We’re reaching a bit of a generational thing, when men like me in their 50s are looking back - how shocked I was, personally speaking, we ran away from it, I ran away from it,” Davies told journalists at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch in London Thursday.

He said that for him it was was not a time of “waving placards” or “marching on Downing Street”, he just “stayed quiet”. “It was just the brave few out on the picket lines. I didn’t go on a march. I couldn’t quite believe it was happening.”

Davies revealed that although people he knew at the time died: “I didn’t go to their funerals, I didn’t write to their mums. I didn’t do anything … you’re young and stupid. You just carry on. When I look back now, I’m ashamed about that. I wonder why I did that.”

“That’s why I need to write this,” he said, partly to “find out why I did what I did”.

Davies said that although his forthcoming Channel 4 drama Cucumber is about gay men in Manchester - it is being broadcast from 22 January along with an interlocking E4 drama called Banana and a factual series called Tofu - he said he hopes “it doesn’t look like it’s just for the gays. I didn’t not watch Cold Feet, just because they were all straight”.

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He said that although it has “got nudity and sex in it” he does not think it will be as controversial as the more “volatile” years when Queer as Folk was broadcast in the late 1990s.

Davies went on to write Bob and Rose and The Second Coming for ITV, Casanova for BBC3, starring David Tennant, and he enjoyed huge mainstream success as showrunner for the Doctor Who revival in 2005.

However, he said Cucumber’s “existence is political. I think it can’t not be. When you see what’s happening in Russia or Senegal you have to do something, stand up and be counted. Every right that’s emerged … still feels fragile”.

Davies also revealed that he has been talking to long-time collaborator Nicola Shindler, founder of Manchester-based independent producer Red, which made Queer as Folk and Cucumber, about a drama about sexploitation gangs in the Philippines and Morocco and online sexual blackmail of young boys.

In addition, he said that another series of his popular CBBC drama Wizards vs Aliens is on hold due to financial reasons, explaining, “there’s not enough money in children’s” television. But he hoped it will return and is also planning another children’s show.