Years and Years: Winter Is Coming

I watched all of Years and Years when it aired on the BBC over the past six weeks. But starting June 24, American audiences can catch it on HBO every Tuesday. I've been telling everyone I know to watch this miniseries, so am now making it official on the blog. In these days of binge watching, I can honestly say that this show was appointment television at my house and I slightly bereft now that it's over.

Created and written by the extraordinary Russell T. Davies, the show centers on an English family from Manchester. While the show begins in 2019, by the end of the first episode we've had a time jump to 2024, and each subsequent episode bounds forward a year or two. The premise is to reveal what happens to the world as we elect increasingly right-wing and nationalistic demagogues to government. Basically, it's a warning about what is going to happen to us all if we continue to ignore politics. It is some of the bleakest TV I have watched, but it also contains revelatory and incisive storytelling that makes a strong case for compassion and kindness in the midst of all our current insanity.

The Lyons family is comprised of the grandmother, Muriel (Anne Reid), and her four grandchildren, Stephen (Rory Kinnear), Edith (Jessica Hynes), Daniel (Russell Tovey), and Rosie (Ruth Madeley). Stephen is a wealthy financial advisor who lives in London with his wife Celeste (T'Nia Miller) and their two daughters, Bethany (Lydia West) and Ruby (Jade Alleyne). Edith is a political activist, who at the beginning of the show has been abroad agitating in various countries and protesting human rights abuses. Daniel is a housing officer who is married to Ralph (Dino Fetscher), while Rosie, who was born with spina bifida and uses a wheelchair, is a single mom of two sons who works in a school cafeteria. As you can see, these characters are a veritable rainbow of personalities and socioeconomic classes, and all face different challenges in life. Therefore, they serve as the perfect family through which to view a world in which governments grow increasingly cavalier to citizen's rights, and start enacting all manner of drastic changes that seem reasonable in the short term, but quickly accumulate over the years to create a society that is out of control. You may have noticed that this show has some hard-hitting British acting talent, but to sweeten the pot, Emma Thompson also stars as Vivienne Rook, a British MP with Nigel Farage-esque views on Britain's place in the world and globalization, who starts out as a politician on the fringes but quickly amasses power whilst stridently complaining about "Fake News."

The show isn't particularly subtle - in fact in the first episode we are faced with a world in which Brexit has taken place and Donald Trump has won re-election. But it keeps piling on the indignities and cleverly showcases how seemingly abstract political machinations have a very real impact on the various members of the Lyons family and start to tear their lives apart. Each episode is a new horror, though I don't think anything could have prepared me for Episode 4, which was viscerally chilling and appalling in a way that I cannot wait to discuss with people after they start watching this show. The final episode (which IS final, because this is a compact six-episode British miniseries, not an American show that will go on forever) will be divisive and felt very characteristic of Russel T. Davies' usual style on shows like Doctor Who and Torchwood. But we can discuss that when you get to it.

Lest I forget, the show isn't all politics. Over fifteen years, there are crazy advances in technology, and Davies is particularly effective in imagining how our lives evolve in both positive and negative ways to accommodate scientific breakthroughs. Bethany is at the forefront of exploring the human-digital interface and while her character's storyline has some bizarre beats, it all feels eminently plausible and likely in a very Black Mirror-esque fashion. I can't wait to see if some of these things come to pass, because none of them felt particularly out there - it's just a question of whether the world manages to stay standing for the next fifteen years so we can see the outcome.

Years and Years is a thought-provoking show that can appeal to audiences on multiple levels. It offers family drama, sociopolitical commentary, science fiction, and cliffhangers that will leave you impatient every week. If you've been at a loss following the end of Game of Thrones, this might be exactly what you need to be thankful for your HBO subscription again. Nuclear winter is coming - watch this show to find out exactly what the warning signs are for our total annihilation.