Years and Years (written by Russell T. Davies)

[selenak]

I was alerted to this newest RTD (mini)series by this review, and also this one, both of which are very favourable indeed. Having watched it now: deservedly so. RTD seems to be on a winning streak, between last year’s A Very English Scandal, and now this, a series set basically five minutes into the future. (Not literally: it starts in 2019 and then follows its characters through fifteen years.) It’s also one of the most political things he’s ever done, while playing to his old strengths and interests – to wit, family dynamics. (Both blood and adopted/chosen families.) (And specifically adult families. Leaving all other differences aside, I always thought it interesting that if Stephen Moffat tackles families, it’s usually via presenting children – as children – whereas Russell T. Davies goes for grown up children interacting with their parents and siblings. The one time I felt the Moff was consciously trying to write a Davies-style dynamic was with Bill and her adopted mother/guardian, and that quickly fell at the wayside because it just wasn’t where his natural writerly interest lay. (This is not meant as a criticism, btw. I loved Bill’s season.) Meanwhile, I don’t think Rusty ever managed a kid like little Amelia Pond – it’s telling that in Torchwood: Children of Earth, little Steven is basically a lamb, whereas the narrative focus and layeredness is with his mother Alice (i.e. an adult) and her complicated emotions about her father Jack.

The Lyons clan in Years and Years consists of grandmother (and great grandmother) Muriel, played by Anne Reid, adult siblings Stephen (Rory Kinnear, first time I’ve seen him since Penny Dreadful), Edith (Jessica Hynes), Daniel (Russell Tovey) and Rosie (Ruth Madeley) as well as their spouses and children. (Again, the fleshed out ones of the children are the ones who start out as teenagers and are adults by the time the series ends, whereas the babies/little kids are just sort of there.) They live in Manchester and experience both country and world going ever more beserk as they try to make it through the years. What’s fascinating to me is that if you compare it with two previous RTD penned (or largely invented) dystopia scenarios – both CoE and Torchwood: Miracle Day qualify, and you might as well throw the DW episode Turn Left in as well, this one, which is far more grounded in reality (with speculation on developments that feel frighteningly plausible to me), actually ends up more optimistically than either. If you’ve watched CoE or MD, you can’t help but feel that by and large, humankind is a pretty rotten species. Otoh, Years and Years ends up concluding that we might have screwed up mightily but there’s hope for us yet, and not just for individual members.

It’s also the first Davies take on a „democratic society turns authoritarian“ scenario that doesn’t use the old trappings of fascism (complete with Nazi red and black colour coding) but instead very much tackles the present day crop. His take on a populist leader, Viv(ienne) Rook, played by Emma Thompson, isn’t really ideologically driven, she’s a hollow collection of useful soundbites, taken for authentic and telling-it-as-it-is because she’s verbally outrageous, underestimated even by her opponents because she’s funny, which is yet another way she wins over crowds. (Sidenote: the old idea that humor and totalitarianism are mutually exclusive, i.e. that humor is by its nature subversive and thus ideal to fight power, is something that fell to the wayside during the rise of the far right in the last decades due to rl examples, but this is one of the first fictional takes which really focus on how humor can be used by the future totalitarians to not just bolster their appeal but trivialize any objections.) Muriel in the last episode sums this up as „the age of clowns and monsters“; another key difference to earlier takes on „main characters experience dystopia“ by Davies is that our heroes are by no means immune. Two members of the Lyons clan actively vote for Viv Rook, and even Edith the social activist (who doesn’t vote for her or anyone else, symbolizing those voters striking through their voting sheets in disgust) early on applauds her for „smashing the system“, after which a revolution will surely come (hello, Susan Sarandon). Even the adult Lyons who don’t vote for her think she’s funny and entertaining, except for Dan, who realises her monstrisity beneath the funny, charming veneer not least because he’s a council worker, and also in love with an Ukrainian refugee directly threatened by what qualifies for Rook’s policies.

(Incidentally, Ukraine being annexed by Russia, Russia’s laws making homosexuality illegal again and Victor’s odyssey through an increasingly closed off Europe are among those futuristic scenarios that I found frighteningly real/familiar, from the get go, as when Victor’s still in England and whether or not his being gay qualifies as a reason for asylum, and whether he’s gay enough is under debate. Cue me flashing to various newspaper reports, mostly from Austria, where asylum seekers really were dismissed for not being gay enough in the judge’s eyes to qualify as threatened.)

That fascism is just something that happens to other people and our heroes would never fall for anyone like that, even if the society around them does, is something inherent in most British and American media, so Davies depicting some of the Lyons going for Viv Rook’s „smash the system, fuck yeah!“ appeal (ignoring that as a rich businesswoman she is the system) feels like the most informed by 2016 onwards element about this show. As do things like Daniel’s husband Ralph, whom he’ll later leave for Victor, starting to repeat various theories previously seen as conspiracy theories on the darknet but now mainstream – Dan’s „what the hell happened to you?“ reaction is one I can identify with, having experienced this with various people in my life by now (though thankfully not a spouse).

At the same time, none of this would work for me if I hadn’t come to care for the characters, flawed as they are. They can be dislikable at times (and that’s before one of them does something truly horrifying in the last but one episode), but they’re never less than human. The way the siblings can take the piss out of each other while also being there for each other, how Muriel and Stephen’s wife Celeste start out in low key mutual resentment and end up becoming incredibly close long past the end of the Stephen/Celeste marriage, or how the aftermath of their father’s death is handled (none of them has been in contact with him for years and they don’t know his second family, including their half brother, very well, so the funeral is this awkward affair full of both pain and black humor) – it all makes them incredibly real to me. I didn’t binge watch it but saw one episode per day because, like I said, a great many of the developments feel scarily plausible to me, but I’m really glad I watched it, and look forward to whatever RTD does next.

Comments

[legionseagle]

I was put off it (though family members watched and enjoyed it) because I absolutely detest the RTD trope of "middle-aged childless woman is monstrous empire-builder" and I couldn't face him doing that again even if it was Emma Thompson in the role, so how did he handle that about Viv?

[selenak]

Well, first of all, Viv isn't childless. When her lack of knowledge on tariffs is exposed during a public debate, she distracts and turns the mood around by telling a story about how horrified she was to discover porn on her six-year-old granddaughter's mobile phone (and ends with a rousing call to protect children vom online porn, which of course no one can be against). Now at a guess, that story is completely made up, but presumably journalists would know whether or not she has a six years old granddaughter. Since Viv with the exception of two scenes is only present in the show the way British voters would know her, via newsclips and talk shows, we never learn about her private life at all. And the two scenes in which she's "live" present are the public debate in Manchester when she's campaigning in the by election for the MP seat, and much later a meeting with a few contractors during which Stephen Lyons is present (which is why the audience is as well). So we never see her outside her public function or find out what she's like in private.

Secondly, there is in fact a middle-aged childless woman with a main role on this show, and that's Edith Lyons, the activist. She's not above making mistakes, but she's Hands down the most heroic character in the ensemble. (Along with Daniel, but Dan is motivated by his love for Viktor, whereas Edith fights as a matter of principle, and always has done, not just in recent years.) At no point does the show imply Edith regrets not having cildren. (She likes her nieces just fine, but they're not replacement kids.) She's also not presented as celibate (during the course of the show she falls in requited love with fellow activist Fran).

[chelseagirl]

Planning on watching this soon! Hearing good things about it everywhere.

[selenak]

I'm looking forward to your take on it.

[hypertwink]

I've tried over the years to watch an RTD creation and I always realize that I still resent him for Ianto lol Anyway, I watched this through (for Russell Tovey and Rory Kinnear) and it's really horrifying. It's near enough to the truth that when it explodes into this nightmare, you can't help but be scared and paranoid in real life.

[selenak]

I hear you - I had moments when I was thinking "did I see this on the news or was that only on the show?"

Also, I was lucky in that I wasn't emotionally invested in Ianto (whereas I really liked his sister in CoE!). Am trying to think of an example where a showrunner or moviemaker or writer killed off a character I deeply cared about in a manner I resented, and I think the closest thing isn't a death, and I think the one time it made me go "I'll avoid that guy's creation now" was Heroes, which I stopped watching early in s3 for a variety of reasons, of which death wasn't yet one (though when I later heard one of my favourite characters was killed off, I was glad to have stopped before that), but one particular villain NOT dying was, as it was so clearly due to fannish popularity and defied all story sense.

[hypertwink]

tbh I was heartbroken but what pissed me off was he was so dismissive of the fans’ feelings. He was in his feels because he thought Gwen was the better character and people slept on her. I mean, it’s probably because she traumatized her boyfriend every night and retconned him over and over again, it’s most likely that lol

[selenak]

Firstly, Gwen retconned Rhys one time, in one s1 episode, where it was clearly shown as the wrong thing to do and didn't get her what she wanted. Fast Forward to s2, Meat and Rhys finding out about Torchwood, Gwen refuses Jack's order to retcon Rhys and would rather leave Torchwood (and thus be retconned herself) than permit it. Jack backs down. From this point onwards, Rhys stays up to speed as to what's going with Torchwood, and while that twice means going on the run or starting a new existence (in CoE and MD), it's something Rhys chooses. His and Gwen's relationship with its ups and downs (for an argument unrelated to anything work-wise, see Adrift in s2, for emotional intimacy and sharing happiness, see for example them in the lorry en route to London) always struck me as the most fleshed out longterm m/f relationship in a Davies/Chibnall cooperation. So "she traumatized her boyfriend every night and retconned him over and over again" is about as accurate a description as saying that Jack hands over children to fairies and Aliens every night, or that Ianto lets overy Cyberman and -women on Earth stay in the Torchwood basement for kicks.

Secondly, I may have forgotten or not paid enough attention, but I recall one dismissive RTD remark re: fannish grief for Ianto, about a year or two after the fact. (The "watch Supernatural instead" quip.) What I do recall is that when CoE was actually broadcast, one of the CoE scriptwriters, James Moran, got absolutely vicious harrassment up to death threats on his blog which he subsequently shut down. I recall Paul Cornell, who wasn't involved in Torchwood at all but had of course worked with RTD on DW, then getting not just outpourings of fannish grief but again hate (against RTD, not Cornell himself) posts on his blog to the point where he didn't allow comments for a while in disgust. And I recall endless posts which at best lectured RTD about how to be propery gay and at worst accused him of homophobia because of Ianto. I have no idea how much of that he saw, but if I were an openly gay man who'd been living as out through all of my adult life (and who'd come of age at the height of the AIDS crisis), I'd take lectures as to what constitutes homophobia and how a gay man should act from people on the Internet... not very well.

Thirdly, regarding RTD’s attitude towards Ianto: in The Writer’s Tale, which was published pre-CoE, there are several complimentary remarks about Gareth Llyod-Davies as an actor and fond remarks about Ianto as a character. Do I think he was more invested in Gwen? Sure, on the evidence of her getting more screen time and development through four seasons. (Though note: RTD wrote the pilot and then didn’t write TW again until CoE. Chris Chibnall was the actual main writer for s1 and s2 and the one supervising character development during that time, including the development and screen time for Ianto and Gwen respectively.) I mean, I’m assuming major storylines were either cleared with RTD as the overall producer or initialized by him (we know of one decision RTD made, which was to switch the character getting killed and resurrected mid season 2 from Ianto to Owen – which btw struck me as wise both because Burn Gorman is the better actor and because half of the show’s canon m/m couple as a zombie unable to feel physical sensations and going through depression would have raised holy hell long before CoE), but Chibnall still did the day to day work. But honestly, RTD likes to put his characters through hell, including killing some of them, full stop. (So does Chris Chibnall.) (If I had to speculate about motive, beyond what the story in Question demands, I'd say that, again, coming of age in the 80s with a lot of your friends dying around you might have something to do with wanting to explore death and grief fictionally throughout your life.) Speaking as someone who was emotionally invested in Tosh and Owen, it always struck me as telling that when they were killed off, a great many Ianto-centric fans reacted basically with „Torchwood people die young, that’s the premise which was established from the pilot onwards, get over it“.

[hypertwink]

See, I told you I was resentful and petty, even if I should have gotten over this years and years ago.