Years and Years (TV series)
Years and Years | |
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Created by | Russell T Davies |
Written by | Russell T Davies |
Directed by |
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Starring | |
Music by | Murray Gold |
Country of origin |
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Original language | English |
No. of episodes | 6 |
Production | |
Executive producers |
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Producer | Karen Lewis |
Production location | Manchester |
Running time | 57–60 minutes |
Production company | Red Production Company |
Original release | |
Network | (US) |
Release | 14 May 18 June 2019 | –
Years and Years is a
The series was directed by
Synopsis
The six-part series follows the Manchester-based Lyons family: Daniel is married to Ralph, Stephen and Celeste worry about their children, Rosie is looking for a new partner, and Edith is engaged in one humanitarian cause after another. Presiding over them all is Gran, the imperious Muriel. All their lives converge on one crucial night in 2019, and the story accelerates into the future, following the lives and loves of the Lyons over the next fifteen years as Britain is rocked by political upheavals, economic instability and technological advances.[5]
Cast and characters
Main
- The Lyons siblings:
- Rory Kinnear as Stephen Lyons, the oldest Lyons sibling, a financial advisor who lives in London with his wife, Celeste, and their two daughters.
- Russell Tovey as Daniel Lyons, a housing officer based in Manchester.
- Jessica Hynes as Edith Lyons, a political activist.
- Ruth Madeley as Rosie Lyons, the youngest of the Lyons siblings, who has spina bifida. She is a single mother, has two sons, Lee and Lincoln, and works in a school cafeteria.
- T'Nia Miller as Celeste Bisme-Lyons, an accountant and Stephen's wife.
- Anne Reid as Muriel Deacon, the Lyons siblings' grandmother.
- Emma Thompson as The Rt Hon Vivienne Rook MP, a charismatic and controversial businesswoman turned politician.
Recurring
- Dino Fetscher as Ralph Cousins, Daniel's ex-husband, who is a primary school teacher.
- Maxim Baldry as Viktor Goraya, a Ukrainian refugee, who forms a romantic relationship with Daniel.
- Lydia West as Bethany Bisme-Lyons, Stephen and Celeste's older daughter, who identifies as transhuman, wishing to turn herself into data.
- Jade Alleyne as Ruby Bisme-Lyons, Stephen and Celeste's younger daughter.
- Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Fran Baxter, a storyteller and activist who is Daniel's friend. She later becomes Edith's partner.
Production
In June 2018, the BBC announced that Russell T Davies would write Years and Years, which was described as "an epic drama following a family over 15 years of unstable political, economical and technological advances".[10] Davies noted that he had been aiming to write the drama series for almost two decades.[5][11][12]
In October 2018, it was announced that Emma Thompson had joined the cast as Vivienne Rook (who shares a name with another of Davies' characters, a journalist in the Doctor Who episode "The Sound of Drums"), alongside Rory Kinnear, T'Nia Miller, Russell Tovey, Jessica Hynes, Lydia West, Ruth Madeley, and Anne Reid.[6] Years and Years was cast by Andy Pryor.[13] It was also announced that the series would be directed by Simon Cellan Jones.
Filming began in Manchester[6] on 22 October 2018[14] and was completed on 17 March 2019.[15] Locations included Trafford Park for the refugee camp and Altcar Training Camp, Liverpool for the "Erstwhile" site.[citation needed]
Episodes
This section's plot summaries may be too long or excessively detailed. (December 2019) |
No. | Episode | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | UK viewers (millions) [16] | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Episode 1 | Simon Cellan Jones | Russell T Davies | 14 May 2019 | 4.26 | |
On 14 May 2019, businesswoman Vivienne "Viv" Rook ( F-bomb " on TV. Rosie goes on a date with Tony but leaves in disgust after she discovers he has sex with his house robot. At a party for grandmother Muriel Lyons' 92nd birthday, the family get a video call from long-absent Edith Lyons, who has travelled to Vietnam, close to Hong Sha Dao. As air raid sirens sound in the UK, news comes that Trump has fired a nuclear missile at Hong Sha Dao. In the ensuing uproar, Celeste tells Bethany that she can be whatever she wants to be, reversing her earlier opposition to Bethany's transhuman ambitions, and Daniel flees Ralph and his family for Viktor, and they have sex for the first time. | ||||||
2 | Episode 2 | Simon Cellan Jones | Russell T Davies | 21 May 2019 | 2.30 | |
In 2025, Edith has survived the Hong Sha Dao nuclear strike but has been exposed to the nuclear fallout. She returns to live in the UK. Bethany, who has calculated radiation patterns from Hong Sha Dao, realises that Edith's life expectancy is ten years, but Edith chooses to keep this from the rest of the family. Celeste loses her job to banking crisis triggered by the collapse of an American investment bank. With nowhere else to go, Stephen, Celeste, and their daughters move into Muriel's large but decaying house in Manchester. Viv Rook is elected MP in a Manchester by-election , as Rosie cheers her on. | ||||||
3 | Episode 3 | Simon Cellan Jones | Russell T Davies | 28 May 2019 | 1.29[4] | |
In 2026, the banking crisis has led to a recession. Viv Rook proposes a national IQ test, with anybody with an IQ of less than 70 being barred from voting. In Ukraine, the police come to arrest Viktor, but he narrowly escapes. Ukraine has now criminalised homosexuality, so Viktor decides to illegally enter Spain and claim asylum. He escapes to Madrid, and Daniel visits him, planning to apply for Spanish citizenship and marry him. Edith returns to activism, infiltrating the offices of a corporation with links to the Syrian dictatorship. The information she steals is released, causing a scandal that shuts down the corporation. Bethany makes friends with Lizzie, another "transhuman" teen at her workplace. The availability of water burial to support Stephen, who is the only one emotionally affected. There they meet with "Steven with a V", their father's son by his second wife. Rosie tells Edith she has always believed her father left the family because he couldn't deal with a child in a wheelchair. Bethany and Lizzie secretly travel to Liverpool for black-market cybernetic surgery, using £10,000 Stephen gave her for her eighteenth birthday. Bethany calls her mother in distress; Lizzie has been given a bogus, malfunctioning eye implant, but Bethany escapes unharmed. At first Celeste is glad Bethany is safe, but later she is furious that Bethany wasted money when the family is in financial crisis. A general election gives The Four Star Party fifteen seats in a hung parliament, allowing Viv Rook to determine the balance of power between a minority government and the opposition. Hearing the election results, Stephen uses his rental car to run over a fellow courier's bicycle in a fit of frustrated rage, while his siblings watch. | ||||||
4 | Episode 4 | Simon Cellan Jones | Russell T Davies | 4 June 2019 | 2.17 | |
In 2027, voting is made universally mandatory, the coalition government collapses, and another general election is called. Countries become unstable: Greece leaves the EU, Italy's government resigns, Hungary declares bankruptcy, and the United States leaves the United Nations in response to extreme nationalism. Spain's government is overthrown by a far-left revolution and Viktor will soon be deported. Meanwhile, Stephen has a bad reaction to a paid drug experiment. He calls Elaine to pick him up, but the clinic accidentally calls Celeste too, and the three have an awkward meeting at his bedside. Arriving home, Celeste coldly confronts Stephen about the affair on a conference call with the whole family. Muriel angrily demands that he leave her house, and Stephen moves in with Elaine. Rosie begins a mobile catering business with her new boyfriend, Jonjo. Edith warns him that she is suspicious of his intentions towards Rosie's young sons and will be watchful. With Viktor soon to be repatriated to Ukraine, Daniel decides he has no choice but to illegally get him into the UK. Their trip is unsuccessful: they are unable to sneak across the border, and their money and passports are stolen while attempting to buy forged documents. Finally, they try sailing in an overcrowded boat from France . Half a mile off the British coast, the boat sinks. Daniel Lyons, along with most of the other passengers, drowns. Viktor survives and returns to Daniel's apartment in Manchester alone. The family rushes to the house, but Viktor won't answer the door. Viv Rook becomes the Prime Minister. | ||||||
5 | Episode 5 | Lisa Mulcahy | Russell T Davies | 11 June 2019 | 2.24 | |
In 2028, Viv Rook promises freedom to her supporters but begins arresting her opponents. Catastrophic flooding and two concentration camps , intended as death camps. Stephen uses the company's computer system to send Viktor to the camp, which Bethany sees. At a memorial service to Daniel, Bethany alone knows that her father has betrayed Viktor and sent him to his likely death. | ||||||
6 | Episode 6 | Lisa Mulcahy | Russell T Davies | 18 June 2019 | 2.61 | |
2029 begins in the midst of a monkey flu pandemic, and Bethany grudgingly tells Edith that her father sent Viktor to the death camp, fearful that she will be implicated in illegal activity and lose her implants. As attacks on journalists increase, the BBC shuts down. Muriel blames the family and humanity at large for the various problems in the world, saying that the cumulative effect of many small acts of indifference has created the toxic environment they now live in. Stephen breaks up with Elaine, buys an illegal gun, and puts it in his desk at work. Viktor wants to contact the family with a smuggled cell phone, but towers at the camp block all signals. By manipulating Stephen, Celeste gets a job at Woody's company to try to get information about the Erstwhile camps. Soon after, Rosie and her neighbours are outraged when her son and his friends are locked out of their apartment complex from an early lockdown due to an incident elsewhere. Meanwhile, Edith and her activist friends take steps to free Viktor and blow up the signal-blocking towers, causing the camp inmates to rush the gates, while armed guards threaten them. At the same time, Stephen confronts Celeste while she is helping Edith using the company's computers, revealing that he had intended to broadcast incriminating evidence against Viv Rook's death camps and then kill himself. Woody charges into the office, and Stephen shoots him in the leg. With the signals unblocked, Bethany and her friends at work broadcast footage from the camp to the whole country. Rosie breaks through the curfew fence around her estate with her catering van, to the cheers of her neighbours, and this act of civil disobedience is also broadcast nationally. With the camp liberated, Edith collapses to the ground. Later, Viv Rook is charged with murder relating to the Erstwhile sites, though it's unclear who financed and backed her, and the BBC is reopened. Stephen goes to jail for three years for shooting Woody but emerges with a new lease of life. Though Stephen and Celeste don't get back together, their family is again happy. Rosie and Jonjo get married and have a son together, named after Daniel. The timeline skips to 2034, where it is revealed that the events of the series were the retellings of Edith's memories, as she is in the process of uploading her mind to a new water molecule-based database, with Bethany watching from Muriel's home as a hologram. As Edith's body dies, she tells the technicians that she doesn't believe her consciousness can really be encoded, because the human spirit is more than just information. The series ends with the whole Lyons clan gathered around Muriel, unsure if Edith's consciousness was uploaded to the cloud. |
Broadcast
The series was broadcast on BBC One in the UK, BBC First in The Netherlands and Belgium,[17] HBO in the US, Mexico, Latin America, Poland, and Spain, SBS in Australia, Soho in New Zealand, Canal+ in France,[6] and ZDF in Germany.
In 2020, the series aired on M-Net in South Africa.[18]
Reception
Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 89% based on 66 critics' reviews, with an average score of 7.30/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Years and Years scathingly critiques the present with a nihilistic projection of the future, leavening the devastating satire with a buoyant sense of humour and characters who are easy to become invested in."[19] On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[20]
US ratings
No. | Title | Air date[21] | Rating (A18–49) |
US viewers |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Episode 1 | 24 June 2019 | 0.05 | 193,000[22] |
2 | Episode 2 | 1 July 2019 | 0.06 | 229,000[23] |
3 | Episode 3 | 8 July 2019 | 0.03 | 171,000[24] |
4 | Episode 4 | 15 July 2019 | 0.03 | 181,000[25] |
5 | Episode 5 | 22 July 2019 | 0.04 | 189,000[26] |
6 | Episode 6 | 29 July 2019 | 0.04 | 265,000[27] |
Censorship in China
The series has been
References
- ^ Fandango Media. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
- ^ a b c Modini, Tanya (31 October 2019). "'Years and Years' imagines a terrifying dystopian future that looks very much like right now". SBS. Retrieved 30 June 2022.
- ^ "Official Website for the HBO Series". HBO. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
- ^ a b Ling, Thomas (19 June 2019). "Russell T Davies on why he'll never do a Years and Years series 2". Radio Times. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
- ^ a b c Martin, Laura (1 January 2019). "Years & Years: Everything we know about the new Russell T Davies and Emma Thompson dystopian drama". inews.co.uk. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
- ^ a b c d e "BBC – Emma Thompson cast in Russell T Davies' BBC One drama Years and Years – Media Centre". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
- ^ "BBC – Get Obsessed – 2019 BBC Drama – Media Centre". www.bbc.co.uk. Archived from the original on 30 May 2019. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
- ^ "BBC One – Years and Years, Series 1, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 14 May 2019.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 24 June 2019.
- ^ "BBC – Gripping new drama Years & Years, from Russell T Davies, set for BBC One – Media Centre". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
- ^ Singh, Anita (1 January 2019). "Emma Thompson plays 'rebel, trickster and terror' MP in BBC drama Years & Years". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
- ^ "First look at Emma Thompson in new Russell T Davies drama Years and Years". Radio Times. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
- ^ "Andy Pryor CGD". Retrieved 13 September 2022.
- ^ "Russell T Davies on Instagram: "Off we go! Day One. BBC One, 2019 @bbc @bbcone #yearsandyears @redproductionco"". Instagram. Archived from the original on 23 December 2021. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
- ^ "Russell T Davies on Instagram: "And that's a WRAP on Years And Years! Thank you Red Production Company, coming soon on BBC One & HBO! . . . @redproductionco @bbc @bbcone…"". Instagram. Archived from the original on 23 December 2021. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
- Broadcasters' Audience Research Board. Retrieved 24 May 2019.
- ^ "Promo". BBC Studios Benelux.
- ^ "SAPeople 6 Best British Shows". 10 July 2020. Retrieved 13 September 2022.
- Fandango Media. Retrieved 3 August 2020.
- ^ "Years and Years". Metacritic. Retrieved 3 August 2020.
- ^ "Shows A-Z – years and years on hbo". TheFutonCritic.com. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
- ^ Metcalf, Mitch (25 June 2019). "Updated: ShowBuzzDaily's Top 150 Monday Cable Originals & Network Finals: 6.24.2019". Showbuzz Daily. Archived from the original on 26 June 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
- ^ Metcalf, Mitch (2 July 2019). "Updated: ShowBuzzDaily's Top 150 Monday Cable Originals & Network Finals: 7.1.2019". Showbuzz Daily. Archived from the original on 2 July 2019. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
- ^ Metcalf, Mitch (10 July 2019). "Updated: ShowBuzzDaily's Top 150 Monday Cable Originals & Network Finals: 7.8.2019". Showbuzz Daily. Archived from the original on 10 July 2019. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
- ^ Metcalf, Mitch (24 July 2019). "Updated: ShowBuzzDaily's Top 150 Monday Cable Originals & Network Finals: 7.15.2019". Showbuzz Daily. Archived from the original on 16 July 2019. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
- ^ Metcalf, Mitch (24 July 2019). "Updated: ShowBuzzDaily's Top 150 Monday Cable Originals & Network Finals: 7.22.2019". Showbuzz Daily. Archived from the original on 23 July 2019. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
- ^ Metcalf, Mitch (30 July 2019). "Updated: ShowBuzzDaily's Top 150 Monday Cable Originals & Network Finals: 7.29.2019". Showbuzz Daily. Archived from the original on 30 July 2019. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
- ^ "Years & Years:辛辣的政治讽刺与预言,是我们所生活着的魔幻现实". Matters. 11 July 2019. Retrieved 11 July 2021.
External links
- Years and Years at BBC Online
- Years and Years at IMDb