Thirty Days of Medici: Favorite Quote

Day 05 ~ Favourite quote from The Medici:

It’s this priceless gem. Context: Jacopo de‘ Pazzi has just finished a long tale about how his ancestor, Pazzino de‘ Pazzi, was the first to climb up the wall of Jerusalem and about the greatness of the Pazzi family with: „One might say we are the oldest, the most noble family of Florence.“

Whereupon Lorenzo de‘ Medici comments, deadpan: „One might, if you didn’t always beat one to it.“

It’s one of the few times we see Jacopo bereft of speech and a comeback on this show.



( The other days )

Years and Years (written by Russell T. Davies)

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.