Years and Years review

This summer’s TV schedule is full of doom and despair. Chernobyl, The Virtues, Love Island. You think we’d be trying to escape the dystopia been burnt onto our eyeballs whenever we watch the news, but no we seem to want it in our entertainment as well. However, it is Years and Years that has really caught my attention this summer.

The six part BBC drama concluded this week. It is written by powerhouse Russell T Davies known both for helming the British institution Dr Who and boundary pushing dramas such as the Cucumber Tofu Banana trilogy and earlier in his career, Queer as Folk. In Years and Years, he brings together both elements of his oeuvre into something that is thought provoking, emotional, entertaining, innovative, tongue-in-cheek, masterfully constructed and much more.

The program follows the Lyons family over a period of fifteen years, taking us all the way up to 2034 in its finale. The show centres around the relationships, celebrations and tensions of the Lyons family, whilst an increasingly apocalyptic series of world events play out in montage to Murray Gold’s anxiety inducing score. At key moments, the Lyons’ family personal dramas line up with world dramas in ways that persistently horrify, shock and at times tear holes through your heart.

Russell T Davies achieves a remarkable feat in creating a mainstream BBC program, with many similarities to Dr Who (without the aliens), whilst being diverse in casting and dealing with prescient issues. At times it is not subtle, but in many ways, that is what I love about it.  Talking about climate change, political populism, new technologies can all be part of a mainstream show. Having a diverse cast and telling diverse stories can be part of a mainstream show.

The more unsubtle moments of Years and Years almost always arise in lamenting diatribes. These come out of the blue. Great grand-mother Muriel could be serving up dinner and then suddenly, bam!! Fire and brimstone is laid upon us as she dissects how we are all responsible for this hellish world we are wallowing over. Now unsubtle is by no means a criticism in this assessment. Sometimes we need nuance and other times we need to be hit over the head with a shovel of unpleasant truth. With An Inspector Calls-esque urgency and fury Years and Years connects to our emotions firsts. It has us in its grasps and when an episode finishes and we finally catch our breath we begin to reflect on the issues that Davies is raising.

Years and Years has come about at the right time. It’s a bricolage of themes; climate change, refugee crises, banks collapsing, the gig economy, fake news, deep fakes, detention centres and on and on. This is a perfectly suitable representation of our over-stimulated, saturated minds.  The show has captured something about the self as well as the world.

In its final episode, plot takes the forefront to close of the series. The ending stays on just the right side of ridiculous and ends on a bitter sweet moment that feels emotionally satisfying but still in-keeping with the tone of the show. Russell T Davies succeeds in crafting a great piece of entertainment with wit, heart and an angry eye on our world. It’s definitely worth watching if you want a bit of doom to darken these long summer days and its available on catch up on BBC IPlayer.