Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Rory Kinnear, Jessica Hynes, Ruth Madeley, Russell Tovey, Emma Thompson, Maxim Baldry, Anne Reid, T’Nia Miller, Lydia West, Arran Ansari, Jade Alleyne, Dino Fetscher, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Rachel Logan, Callum Woolford, George Bukhari, Zita Sattar, Kieran O’Brien, Pauline Fleming, Ellie Haddington,  Jodie Prenger, Dan Starkey, John McGrellis.

The rate of human evolution is not measured in the great and vast leaps, but in the small steps that make older generations either stare in wonder or blindly accept with panic the inevitable perceived crash of society and humanity. For those who grew up believing they had seen some far off future imagined at the hands of film studios and talked of the prospect of talking over short distances with phones that could be carried around in their hand rather than be tied to a plug in the wall, to be immersed in such a world must have been pure fantasy, something that might happen within a hundred years, not within their life time.

It is the smallest of steps that we endure the everyday in which momentous events take on even greater significance, it is the seismic shift in which we see our children take on the world with confidence, but also one in which we rightly fear the consequences, the aftermath of a decision made somewhere in the world which effects the mind, which can produce shockwaves in society.

We don’t need to turn to Science Fiction in which to see what the future holds, it is all around us, the moment in which Russell T. Davies exemplifies in the searing drama Years And Years.

We are changed, perhaps even manipulated by Time, a small pebble thrown can cast just as large and sweeping ripple, the seed is sown in the everyday and through the enormity and vast experience of Mr. Davies’ writing career, the viewer is left with no doubt just how insightful this particular British drama is.

Think how bad the future can be and what the world might look like in ten years’ time and you will give yourself nightmares but examine it from the everyday change, the small detail, the wrong word said at the time and slowly but surely we attune ourselves to the possibility, and quite often we accept it as part of life. The banking crisis, a rogue Prime Minister, floods, the refugee crisis, job losses, the gig economy, sex robots, computer and technological adaptions implanted into the human form, the forever possibility of hearing the four minute siren that ends our perceived measure of society, all hanging on the moment and which can be overwhelming but instead of the tsunami of bad news that destroys all in its path, we have creeping advances, the stealth of the irresistible force.

Years And Years makes you catch your breath, devastatingly superb performances by Rory Kinnear, Jessica Hynes, Ruth Madeley, Russell Tovey, T’Nia Miller, Lydia West and the brilliant Emma Thompson are delivered with just the right edge of plausibility to give the story the realism it fully deserves. A moment of television which impacts on the way you think, the small stone thrown in the everyday encounter leading to the tsunami of fear, the uncontrollable tidal wave to which we are being asked to navigate, but to which is unavoidable. Stunning television.

Ian D. Hall