When I heard the initial buzz about Years and Years, a political near-future sci-fi series from Russell T Davies, I was interested... yet skeptical. The trailer gave a clear indication of the tone and vague implications about the plot, but it was hard to tell what the main story would be. At the end of the first episode, the dramatic final moments provided a doozy - a war story centred around a working class family in Manchester, nay, a World War III story. Then... it is barely mentioned again and the main characters are largely unchanged in the following episode. The main crux of the Years and Years story then revealed itself: jumps in the passage of time, with each episode focusing on a few years with (admittedly well-executed) montages dotted throughout. It's an interesting trope, no doubt, and a hopscotch journey through nearly two decades was obviously the original intention as befits the name Years and Years. There are some good storylines developed over the episodes, namely the rise of politician Vivienne Rook (whom also was indicated to have a greater physical presence by the trailers) and the demise of the banking system, but by committing to this idea the creators grasped a double-edged sword. Subplots just... end, or fall into obscurity between episodes. A character might be clearly heading in one direction, and then through some unseen event will completely turn heel. It wasn't a problem, honestly, during the first five episodes. There were new developments and compelling plot points or sci-fi inventions to replace what was left by the wayside, and the time left for something 'big' to still happen. Then I watched the finale, and discovered the somewhat disappointing truth, that there isn't. The 'big' thing was Danny's death two episodes prior, which didn't produce anything worthwhile besides a couple of scenes of grieving and Stephen's villainous transition, putting Viktor into an Erstwhile camp. Vivienne Rook is given no further focus, instead being absorbed into the already too prominent storyline of Viktor's immigration subplot with a brief moment of her exposure in the closing montage. Guess she wasn't that important after all. Stephen reaches the point of self-destruction, as made sense for his character, especially after the aforementioned villainous actions, he even has a gun, and then he just... doesn't. Even though people knew about his betrayal of Viktor, he doesn't face any consequences, he... moves to Spain and teaches English to kids! As the family reconvene at the end for the last time, basically nothing has changed with their relationships, despite a flurry of subsequent family disasters that would, should, have torn them apart, main characters have become practically irrelevant to the main story like Rosie, and the final scene is devoted to a sci-fi convention that jumps to a strangely out-of-place neon future room that only achieves preventing the death of one of the characters that we were told was going to die in the FIRST episode. If that wasn't bad enough, the tired and unconvincing result of the main storyline, Viktor and the Erstwhile sites, isn't particularly interesting and the actual sites don't seem that bad, it looks more like an army boot camp than anything. Then it's fine because the somehow avoid being shot multiple times and the glorious wonder of a dozen or so phones come to the rescue and they record the bad guys until they win and everything's fine - even though a plot element in an earlier episode established advanced CGI 'deepfakes' that could fake real footage. It kind of seems like they gave up on the story in the end, and what is it with writers and subverting the plot nowadays? I wasn't a Game of Thrones fan, but this certainly annoyed me. It's not smart, it's just jarring and destroys any relationship the viewer might have had with the character because they can't feel like they know them anymore.
With all this said, I didn't want to express a completely negative view. Years and Years is an extremely well-produced and, at least, unique show that has a lot of good moments with its realistic British dystopia, great performances from most of the cast, a powerful score and a balanced mix of comedy and drama. It makes bold choices about the near future, although maybe tempting fate with things like predicting a second term for Trump, and introduces various sci-fi and political changes to the world. It's fine for what it is, I think it could have been significantly better in its final two episodes, but it is actually perfect in tone and scope for the modern everyday audience. People who don't get as invested in television should catch this on an evening on the BBC, because it will prompt deep, important conversation about our real world and its tumultuous political environment. I'd even give a following series the benefit of the doubt... except Davies confessed that it will never happen because he doesn't want to answer the oh-so-epic 'Edith' question... plus what seems to be the real reason, how much it would cost to portray more than 15 years into the future. In his own words, 'Life would be so different that we'd need a different budget for it - it would be a different and very expensive show.' Wow. Not really though. He went on to comment, 'Let's be honest, the viewing figures aren't that good anyway.
Oh, well, Davies. Maybe next time.
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