On 28 July 1967, homosexual acts in private between two adult men aged 21 and over were made legal in England and Wales. Before this date, the maximum penalty for gay male sex in the UK had been life imprisonment.

The change in law was the start of a long road to legal equality for gay British men and women - leading, in recent years, to the overturn of a ban on openly gay personnel in the military (2000), an equal age of consent with heterosexuals (2001), the right for gay and lesbian couples to adopt (2002), laws preventing workplace discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation (2003), and finally the Civil Partnerships Act (2004), giving same-sex couples the legal rights, if not the title, of marriage.

To mark this 40th anniversary, the UK's Channel 4 has been showing what was called a “season” of films and documentaries on gay history and modern gay life. This “season” was slightly less substantial than the name might suggest, consisting of only five programs that were shown over the course of last week. Although two of the programs were genuinely interesting and thought provoking, the season overall felt disappointingly limited and shallow in scope.

A Very British Sex Scandal aired first and was one of the better offerings. Mixing dramatic reenactment with testimony from real-life gay seniors, it told the story of the high-profile trial that eventually led to a change in the law regarding gay men.

In the 1950s, homosexuality was still seen by politicians and doctors as a contagious disease - a public health issue. Prominent politician Sir David Maxwell Fyffe promised to “rid England ” of the “plague” of homosexuality. It was in this atmosphere that a rising young journalist, Peter Wildeblood, met and fell in love with an airman, Eddie McNally.

When the affair was discovered and the men were brought to court, Wildeblood refused to deny his homosexuality. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison, but when he got out he wrote Against the Law, a book in which he became possibly the first man in English literature to declare himself as gay. The trial and his willingness to testify openly led to hearings that looked into the laws against homosexuality and eventually a report that, along with changing public attitudes, caused the laws to eventually be changed.

A Very British Sex Scandal performed several valuable functions. First, it told the story of a very brave man, whose name, sadly, is not well known in Britain - unlike, say, that of Martin Luther King. It also explored the effect of anti-sodomy laws on the lives of gay men. As clearly demonstrated here, they didn't succeed in preventing sex between men - what they really made difficult was intimacy. So much risk was involved with gay relationships – especially the threat of blackmail – that the law encouraged anonymous, one-time hookups between men as opposed to committed relationships.

During the reenactment where Wildeblood took the risk of falling in love with McNally and allowing him to know his identity, the recurrence of threatening music chillingly conveyed the near-perpetual fear in which he had to live. Every time the doorbell rang, there was the chance that it was the police. Every time he was summoned to his boss' office, there was the chance he was about to be fired and prosecuted. The jumpiness that this music produced in the viewer helped to illustrate the way in which having to hide his sexuality permeated every aspect of Wildeblood's life.

The dramatization of the trial also helped to take the viewer back to a time when a court of law would feel completely justified in asking for every detail of what went on in bed between two adult men. Even details that didn't include sex could be damning - as when Lord Montagu, a man being tried alongside Peter Wildeblood, is questioned about an all-male party:

Prosecutor: Reynolds has told us that dancing took place. Do you deny this?

Lord Montagu: I do.

At the end of the program, a real-life gay couple who have been together since before 1967 recalled the elation, when the law changed, of being able to get rid of their two single beds and buy a double bed. A Very British Sex Scandal showed how love and commitment could flourish between men, even in a world where it was forbidden by law.