Years and Years: Dystopia Lite
What could be more chilling than Black Mirror, a show that triple distils modern anxieties into terrifying possibilities? Perhaps trading out “possible” for “plausible” to create something less white knuckled?
So, imagine a near future in which the chaos breaking out in today’s news was amplified a little - say thirty percent - then depicting how it affects the lives of people just like the viewer.
This is the premise of Years and Years, a BBC HBO co-production that follows a Manchester family as they struggle through a world in turmoil. Our world to be precise. Beginning in 2024 each episode takes place a year after the previous one.
The key is relatability - this is not some dystopian nightmare but today’s world taken to it’s logical conclusion. And unlike a nightmare, you cannot wake up because the seeds from story-lines will bombard you from every device with Breaking News updates that seem to be happening more and more frequently. Banks are crashing, the North Pole has melted, a refugee crisis as Russia occupies the Ukraine while in Britain and the US ascendant populist parties dismantle teetering democracies.
The show locks on to the Lyons, a family spread over four generations, and progresses through conversations held on conference calls over Señor, an Alexa clone. The generational divide is an important feature in Y&Y, as each has a separate reaction to the grim state of the world: there is financial adviser Roy and his wife Celeste who become victims of the collapsing economy; the grandmother the wise Muriel Deacon a relic from a more stable world (she has her own house); Edith an anarchist and political activist determined to destroy the buckling structures of oppression at any cost; Daniel a gay housing officer responsible for allocating shelter to Ukrainian refugees as they stream in; wheelchair bound Rosie is happy to immerse herself in the entertainment of collapsing while compartmentalising herself from the consequences. The younger generation two children of Roy and Celeste know no other world and far less anxious with the breakneck pace of it all.
Perhaps the most fascinating character of all is Vivienne Rook, played by Emma Thompson - a sort of female Nigel Farage. She appears throughout the show to sneer on screens as the greatest and most morally bankrupt show in the country. In one of the best scenes is a national election and each family member enters the voting booth and you see how they vote by their ballot papers. Some that vote for Rook are a surprise, and go against what they had just spoken about during a family chat - a sly nod to the disintegrating voter base, and unreliability of modern polling.
As a show it does not pull any punches. It is willing to kill off major characters and sadistically ruin the lives of others. Through this the show taps in the core anxiety of the epoch - that civilisation is in unstoppable decline and quality of life for our children will be in every way inferior to ours.
It is unflinching in how it exposes the Lyons family to the various catastrophes. Some are a little far fetched like Edith being exposed to a toxic level of radiation when documenting a nuclear blast but most are not. It is unnerving to watch the today’s news bash from inside the television against the screen which cracks and shatters and have all the chaos stream inside to ruin perfectly likeable characters.
I have an ongoing debate with a friend that Black Mirror could not have been executed in America. There is too much demand for a final moment of redemption. Only a country that experienced a Darkest Hour can depict catastrophe unconstrained. I have not yet seen the series finale of Y&Y but fear for the worst for the Lyons family.
The real asset of Y&Y is that it overcomes the crisis of imagination we have trying to understand how the calamities in the news could evolve to affect us. Climate change, the refugee crisis, populism all seem remote when viewed through a screen so it is ironic that it takes another screen to make them all very real indeed.