When the nuclear bombs come, all you’ll need is a nice cup of tea
NOTHING cheers us up like a good worry. There’s something soothing about imagining the worst — and russell T. Davies must be feeling very cheerful and soothed indeed.
In the first hour of his cataclysmic family serial, Years And Years ( BBC1), the writer fretted frantically about the prospect of President Trump’s re-election next year, the disappearance of butterflies, sex robots, russia’s annexation of Ukraine, compulsory porn lessons for 11-year-olds and nuclear war with China.
The premise of the tale is that civilisation has been spiralling towards disaster since the banking crisis of 2008 — and, if you think things are bad now, they’ll be a whole lot worse in five or ten years. The era when humanity made great discoveries and wrote sublime music is gone, lamented Stephen (rory Kinnear): ‘Our brains are devolving.’
russell T is 56. I have a theory that when men who are getting on a bit start predicting the end of the world, they are really projecting their fears for their own mortality on to the rest of creation.
The Astronomer royal Sir Martin rees, 76, for instance, has been warning that the end is nigh ever since he turned 60, with asteroid impacts and rogue robots being two of his major concerns. Years
CHEAP SHORTHAND OF THE
NIGHT: From the moment nasty Michael (David Caves) looked at collie Meg in 15 Days (C5) and jeered, ‘Nice dog,’ we knew the animal was doomed. Why is killing pets now such a common cliche in TV crime? It’s lazy. And Years didn’t stop to worry about the likelihood of a stray comet crashing into our orbit.
russell’s bugbears were oddly old-fashioned: as the atom bombs began to fly, his characters were holed up in a remote country house for birthday celebrations with their gran (Anne reid). Her response was to make a pot of tea.
The rest of the family looked like they weren’t sure whether to build a nuclear shelter out of mattresses and doors, or go full Lord Of The Flies and start dancing naked around bonfires.
even amid the gathering mushroom clouds, the whole programme had a smug glow. All the world’s problems were caused by people who were insufficiently right-on or virtuously Leftie. In one dismissively sneering touch, the script foresaw the death of the Queen in 2022. Granny Anne was the only person who cared, wearing a black dress and standing to attention.
russell has a problem writing likeable female characters. The women in Years And Years are nags, bullies, racists or raving narcissists — all four in the case of emma Thompson, who plays a populist politician fuelling divisions across the country.
However, one clever prediction involves a digital face mask called a ‘filter’, which projects cartoon emojis to convey emotions. When the wearer is happy, for example, a gurgling baby-faced smiley appears. russell T’s filter has probably worn out its ‘worried sick’ emoji.
If Bear Grylls were an emoji, however, he’d be that crazy one with the rolling eyes and the drooling tongue, delirious with glee.
Bear’s Mission With David Walliams (ITV) saw him hurtling in all directions across Dartmoor in a Land rover, before urging the Britain’s Got Talent judge to abseil down sheer cliffs and finally climb a rope ladder up an aqueduct.
‘This man is not letting go!’ Bear crowed fatuously. Good job, too — the drop was at least 100ft.
Despite the dangers, David seemed to have trouble taking it seriously. He quipped constantly that Bear was trying to kill him, ‘ because he knows it would make good television, and he hates the idea of anyone being more successful than him’.
Dinner was rat on a stick, which both men insisted was delicious. As a fast food, it’ll never catch on.