Created and written by
Russell T Davies.
'It's
all your fault...The banks, the government, the recession, America, Mrs Rook.
Every single thing that's gone wrong - it's your fault. We can sit here all
day, blaming other people. We blame the economy. We blame Europe. The
opposition. The weather. And then we blame these vast, sweeping tides of
history, you know, like they're out of our control, like we're so helpless, and
little and small. But it's still our fault.
You
know why. It's that £1 t-shirt. A t-shirt that costs £1. We can't resist it. Every
single one of us. We see a t-shirt, that costs £1, and we think, "Ooh,
that's a bargain. I'll have that." And we buy it. And the shopkeeper gets
five miserable pence for that t-shirt. And some little peasant, in a field,
gets paid 0.01p. And we think that's fine. All of us. And we hand over our quid
and we buy into that system, for life.
I
saw it all going wrong when it began, in the supermarkets, when they replaced
all the women on the till with those automated checkouts.
Twenty
years ago, when they first popped up, did you walk out? Did you write letters
of complaint? Did you shop elsewhere? Nooo. You huffed and you puffed and you
put up with it. And now all those women are gone and we let it happen. And I
think we do like them, those checkouts, we want them, because it means we can
stroll through, pick up our shopping, and we don't have to look that woman in
the eye. The woman who's paid less than us. She's gone. We got rid of her.
Sacked.
Well done. So yes. It's our fault. This is the world we built. Congratulations.
Cheers all."
Starring a host of well-known
faces from the Whoniverse, Years and Years centred on one family in Manchester
and their lives from 2019 to 2029-31. It became very political, it focused on
Brexit and what Britain could face with morons in charge of the country. It was
stark and frightening, and uplifting and shocking, and sad, and happy, and
funny and upsetting, and all the things that you would expect from RTD and that
little bit more and then, because you know it's Russell, and because we've
known him write such stories, that that touch of sci fi wasn't too far from his
fingertips, yes, Years & Years got a little Who-y towards the end.
You rooted for characters.
You were shocked by their demise. You were glad some saw it out to the end,
when you doubted in some way that they could. You were disgusted by one of
their actions. You were mesmerised by the sheer brilliance of some and that
nobody questioned their dress sense. Nobody poked holes in their character. There
were Ooohs, and Ahhhs, and Wows and Woahs and Bloody Hells.
It's been one of those
series that you had to focus on from the very beginning. You couldn't take a
break - well you could if it was on iPlayer, but you chose not to. You couldn't
break up that level of drama, with tea breaks and rustles of crisp packets.
It was British TV and the
BBC at its very best, and it was freakin’ awesome.
There were a few times
with the techno gizmos that appeared, like the girl who could phone using her
hand, and speak into her little finger and hear from her thumb. She had the
power of the Internet literally at her fingertips. Then there were the ultimate
upgrades that freaked the hell out of me in the 3rd/4th episode.
The Vivien Rook story and
oh how I wondered if Russell remembered that character, he wrote about in
Doctor Who episode Sound of Drums. She too was a Vivien(ne) Rook, Torchwood
operative with details of Harold Saxon's fake identity. Did anyone else
remember that?
Although, this story was a
sci fi Dystopian future, it was played quite closely to the events opening up
from the 2016 referendum on Britain leaving the European Union, and all the
hell that would or possibly could happen. Obviously, nobody really knows
how this EU debacle will pan out in the years to come. It might not be as bad
as everyone is thinking – but as we’ve never done anything quite as dramatic as
this in our past history, least I don’t think we have, and not in our
generation, then, we really don’t know, how our lives will be affected by the
way politics are unfolding in Westminster.
Then there was the
Torchwood: Miracle Day events that opened up in my head about the Concentration
camps for the foreign migrants coming to the UK for a better life. The
Disappeared.
I think the best part of
the entire series was the speech made by Anne Reid, that summed us up in a
nutshell, and all to do with a £1 t-shirt and automated tills. I personally
hate those machines; I always seem to use the ones that refuse your money and
refuse to scan properly. If I’d have used the one operated by a real person,
I’d have probably come away a lot quicker. If nothing this series has given us
food for thought, and it’s one to take very seriously, given our current
climate.
But I wonder, is Russell T
Davies, just a brilliant writer or is he a visionary like HG Wells and Isaac
Asimov?
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