‘YEARS AND YEARS’ IS THE MOST TERRIFYING TELEVISION SHOW I’VE WATCHED ALL YEAR
Television can be a great escape from the harsh realities of life. Not the nightly news, obviously. But drama and comedy series can help you forget about climate change, political extremism, wars, corruption and the rest of the ills that plague modern society, even if only for an hour.
Then there’s Years and Years (starts Wed., Nov. 6 at 8.30pm; SBS), which not only serves as a reminder of all those things, but shows how life could potentially get a whole lot worse in the years to come. It is also one of the best shows to air this year, even if it does make it hard to go to sleep afterwards. Guess that’s my fault for somehow always ending up watching another episode right before bedtime. It certainly gives you a lot to think – and fret – about.
The six-part drama follows the Lyons family, a group of siblings from Manchester, England, and their partners, offspring and battleaxe of a grandmother. Beginning in 2019, the narrative then jumps ahead five years, with each subsequent episode taking place the following year. And the further into the future the story goes, the worse things get.
Some of the problems the Lyons clan face are just the normal things any family has to contend with – infidelity, death, illness, unemployment. Others are truly unique to the times in which they find themselves, such as the fact one of the teenage children in the family says she is transhuman, and wants to quit her corporeal form and upload herself to the Cloud. Or the refugee that council worker Dan (Russell Tovey) befriends who was tortured for being gay in Ukraine and risks being executed if he is sent back. Or the collapse of various financial institutions that leave one branch of the family destitute.
And the thing is, everything that happens is entirely plausible. Even though the story progresses all the way to 2034 and creator and writer Russell T Davies is inventing what he thinks may come to pass – Donald Trump is re-elected, for one thing – nothing feels out of the realms of possibility. And that is what is so terrifying. As chaos and turmoil envelop the world, the Lyons family cope as best they can, which often isn’t very well at all.
In the background to all this is another storyline in which outspoken political candidate Vivienne Rook (Emma Thompson), who makes a name for herself by declaring she doesn’t “give a f--k about” the problems in Palestine, gradually becomes a major force in the UK. A political figure in the style of Trump, Pauline Hanson and other populist leaders who position themselves as the champion of ‘normal folk’, Viv is possibly the most terrifying aspect of Years and Years. We see her style of divisive politics everywhere at the moment. Perhaps we are all as doomed as the Lyonses. •