Years and Years

Television series
German title	Years and Years
Original title	Years and Years
Country of production	United Kingdom
original language	English
year	2019
Production ; company	Red Production Company
length	60 minutes
Episodes	6 in 1 season
genre	Drama , ; science fiction
idea	Russell T Davies
production	Karen Lewis
music	Murray Gold
Initial release	May 14, 2019 on BBC One
; First publication in German	March 5th, 2020 on StarzPlay
occupation

Years and Years is a British television series that premiered on BBC One on May 14, 2019 . BBC One co-produced it with the US television network HBO , and it was first broadcast in the United States on June 24 of the same year.

The idea for the series comes from Russell T Davies , who also wrote the scripts for all six episodes. It is set in a dystopian future from 2019 to 2034 . According to Davies, he had planned to bring the series to screen for more than twenty years.

In Germany, the series will run on the pay TV channel Starzplay from March 5, 2020 and can therefore be seen via the Starplayz app, the Starplayz channel on Prime Video and Apple TV .

action

The series focuses on the everyday life of the Lyons family, originally from Manchester : Daniel, who works for a housing office , is homosexual and soon wants to marry his partner, the elementary school teacher Ralph. His older brother Stephen, a financial advisor , and his sister-in-law, Celeste, an accountant who live in London , are concerned about their two daughters, the young adult Bethany and the teenage Ruby. His younger sister Rosie, who works in a school cafeteria, has to look after her sons Lee and Lincoln as a single mother and suffers from spina bifida , wants to find a new partner. His bisexual sister Edith is constantly traveling around the world for countless aid organizations and has therefore not seen the others for a long time. The imperious Muriel, the grandmother of the siblings, is the matriarch of the family . At a family reunion in 2019, not only does the life of the family change but the future of the UK forever due to a political incident. The plot now focuses both on the private life of the Lyons within the next 15 years and on the political situation in the country, which is characterized by instability due to political, economic and technological developments.

occupation

The synchronization of the series was created by Hermes Synchron under the dialogue direction of Michael Deffert .


role	actor	Voice actor
Vivienne Rook	Emma Thompson	Monica Bielenstein
Stephen Lyons	Rory Kinnear	Michael Deffert
Celeste Bisme-Lyons	T'Nia Miller	Christin Marquitan
Daniel Lyons	Russell Tovey
Edith Lyons	Jessica Hynes
Rosie Lyons	Ruth Madeley
Muriel Deacon	Anne Reid
Bethany Bisme-Lyons	Lydia West	Mia Diekow
Ruby Bisme-Lyons	Jade Alleyne
Ralph Cousins	Dino Fetscher
Viktor Goraya	Maxim Baldry
Fran Baxter	Sharon Duncan-Brewster
Lee Lyons	Callum Woolford Adam Little
Lincoln Lyons	Aaron Ansari Jett Moises Aiden Li
Jonjo Aleef	George Bukhari

Episode list

No.	German title	Original title	First broadcast in UK	German language first publication (D / A / CH)	Director	script
1	episode 1	Episode 1	May 14, 2019	5th March 2020	Simon Cellan Jones	Russell T Davies
On May 14, 2019 , businesswoman Vivienne Rook is a guest on an evening talk show and says that she “ doesn't give a shit” about the Middle East conflict , and that the world is much nicer after Angela Merkel's death , her statements are controversially discussed in the media. That same evening, young Rosie Lyons has a son, Lincoln, who is the result of an affair with a Chinese man. Lincoln's uncle Daniel is already worried about his nephew's future shortly after the birth of his nephew, as the state of the world makes him deeply insecure. The act will continue in 2024. Donald Trump has meanwhile been confirmed for a second term as president, China has built an artificial island and the Hong Sha Dao military base in a strait, which is politically highly controversial. Daniel marries his partner Ralph, while the British Queen dies at the age of 98, Vivienne's candidacy as an independent candidate fails in the general election and a Russian- backed military government gains power in Ukraine . Daniel is now running a refugee camp, where he meets the young Ukrainian Viktor, who fled his country because he was tortured because of his homosexuality. This strains Daniel's relationship with Ralph as he has feelings for the young man. Bethany Bisme-Lyons tells her parents Stephen and Celeste that she is transhuman and wants to upload her consciousness to a cloud , to which Celeste is completely horrified. Meanwhile Vivienne is founding her own party, which she calls the four-star party . This is a nod to the asterisks the media have used as placeholders for their vulgar expression . Rosie goes on a date with Tony, who is also a single parent, but leaves his apartment in disgust when she notices that he has regular sex with his household android . At Grandmother Muriel's 92nd birthday party, the family received a video call from Edith, whom they had not answered for months. It is located in Vietnam , not far from Hong Sha Dao. Suddenly , the siblings heard civil defense signals and learned from the news that Donald Trump had ordered a nuclear attack on Hong Sha Dao. The Lyons panic, amid the turmoil, Celeste assures her daughter that she is okay with her transhumanism, while Daniel leaves and visits Viktor, whom he has sex with.
2	Episode 2	Episode 2	May 21, 2019	5th March 2020	Simon Cellan Jones	Russell T Davies
Edith will be interviewed on television in 2025. She survived the nuclear attack on Hong Sha Dao, but was exposed to the very high levels of radiation for too long, which is why she announced that she would die of cancer in a maximum of 20 years. She is returning to the UK to be closer to her family. She befriends Fran Baxter, a neighbor of Daniel, and begins a relationship with her. Bethany, who has studied radiation measurements from Hong Sha Dao in detail, comes to the conclusion that her aunt has a maximum of ten years left, but Edith does not want to tell anyone. Celeste loses her job as an accountant due to artificial intelligence, so she and Stephen are forced to sell their house. Bethany, who has just come of age, has cybernetic implants planted in her hand to slowly become transhuman and gets her first job in data mining . Daniel now lives with Viktor and is in the process of divorce with Ralph, which Muriel is pleased about. Although Ralph pretends to agree to the separation without any resentment, he reveals Viktor to the home office because he works in a gas station, which asylum seekers are not allowed, which is why he is sent back to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Rosie and the now nihilistic Edith go to a television debate, while Vivienne unexpectedly becomes the audience favorite. Daniel is not very pleased when he learns that Rosie suddenly supports the right-wing conservative politician, who advocates eugenics , among other things, because his sister is physically disabled. Meanwhile, Stephen and Celeste are selling their house for £ 2.6million , of which they will have £ 1.2million left after paying the mortgage, and depositing the entire amount into their bank account. The next day, only £ 85,000 of the money is left after the bankruptcy of a US investment bank triggered a financial crisis. The family has to move in with Muriel in Manchester, whose house is very large, but also very dilapidated. At the end of the episode, to Rosie's delight, Vivienne was elected to parliament in a by- election.
3	Episode 3	Episode 3	May 28, 2019	5th March 2020	Simon Cellan Jones	Russell T Davies
There will be a recession in the UK in 2026 due to the financial crisis. Vivienne suggests taking a national IQ test, with anyone below 70 losing the right to vote. Viktor barely escapes arrest because of his homosexuality, which is now illegal in Ukraine, which is why he wants to immigrate illegally to LGBT -friendly Spain and apply for asylum there. He comes to Madrid , where he soon receives a visit from Daniel, who wants to apply for Spanish citizenship and marry him. Meanwhile, Edith discovers that a company has ties to Bashar al-Assad , so she infiltrates it with the help of her nephew Lincoln. She steals and publishes confidential information, and the following scandal leads to the closure of the company. Meanwhile, Bethany befriends Lizzie, who is also transhuman, at work, while Rosie loses her job in the school cafeteria as they eliminate the need for newly introduced self-warming convenience foods. Stephen now has several badly paid jobs, including as a laboratory worker and bicycle courier, he also starts an affair with his colleague Elaine, which Celeste knows about but is silent about. A little later, the siblings learned that their father, who had fallen out with them, was hit by a bicycle courier and died of antibiotic resistance . They only go to the funeral for Stephen's sake because he is the only one to mourn his father. At his funeral they meet "Steven with V", the son of Jacqueline, her father's second wife, whom they cannot stand. Rosie expresses her suspicion to Edith that her father left the family because of her disability and being forced into a wheelchair. Meanwhile, Bethany and Lizzie are driving £ 10,000, Bethany's present for her 18th birthday. secretly to Liverpool to have cybernetic implants implanted in a black market clinic. A little later, Bethany calls her mother hysterically: Lizzie has received a fake, non-working eye implant, but she herself escaped unscathed. Celeste makes her way to Liverpool, relieved at first that her daughter is fine, but then angry that she wasted £ 10,000 given the family's financial situation. In the election, the four-star party received 15 seats, which is why Vivienne ultimately maintains the balance of power between the minority government and the opposition. When Stephen hears about it, he gets nervously into his rental car and deliberately runs over the bike of a bicycle courier, while his siblings react with complete indifference.
4th	Episode 4	Episode 4	4th June 2019	5th March 2020	Simon Cellan Jones	Russell T Davies
In 2027, compulsory voting will be introduced and the government coalition will break up, as a result of which Vivienne will rise to the office of Prime Minister. In addition to deepfakes of supposedly xenophobic politicians, foreign crises play into her hands: There is a communist revolution in Spain, Greece is leaving the European Union , Hungary is bankrupt, and the entire Italian government is stepping down. In addition, in the USA, which is no longer a member of the UN due to extreme nationalism , both same-sex marriage and the right to abortion have been abolished, and Spanish is no longer allowed to be spoken in public. When Edith travels to the United States and protests, she is expelled from the country and declared a persona non grata . Meanwhile, Stephen is in the hospital because he took part in a drug study and could not tolerate the medicine. He calls Elaine, but the clinic also notifies Celeste, which is why the two women meet at his hospital bed. At home, Celeste reveals Stephen's affair, which is why Muriel expels him from the house and he finds accommodation with Elaine. Rosie goes into business for herself and starts a very successful mobile catering company with her new friend Jonjo, who appears to be suspicious of Edith . Daniel and Viktor want to bring the latter back to the UK illegally, as the left-wing extremist new government in Spain is deporting all migrants. First they fail when crossing the border, then they want to get forged passports, whereby their money is stolen. Eventually they hit upon the idea of crossing the English Channel into the country in an overcrowded rubber dinghy . The boat capsizes about a kilometer from the mainland, most of the occupants, including Daniel, drown, Viktor survived and returned to Manchester. In Daniel's apartment, he stoically notifies the siblings that when they arrive at his place, he does not answer the doorbell.
5	Episode 5	Episode 5	June 11, 2019	5th March 2020	Lisa Mulcahy	Russell T Davies
Vivienne has her political opponents arrested in 2028. England is experiencing severe flooding due to global warming , and two dirty bombs are being dropped on Bristol and Leeds , increasing homelessness and making all residents who have vacancies in their dormitories sheltered. Edith, who has meanwhile moved in with Fran and works with the resettlement agency, learns from Viktor, who is in custody , that people in need will soon be interned in the camps named Erstwhile . Meanwhile, crime rises in Rosie's Manchester neighborhood, so several checkpoints are set up in front of her property and she loses her driving license. Bethany receives a brain implant, which allows her to dive straight into the Internet, but also to shadow her family. Stephen couldn't pay for his operation himself, so Bethany has to do unpaid virtual government work. Meanwhile, Muriel is diagnosed with macular degeneration , but she is undergoing emergency surgery on her last 10,000 pounds at an NHS hospital, which cures the disease. The relationship between Celeste and Muriel improves, but Celeste feels like a servant with Muriel. Edith, with Bethany's help, breaks into a facility that has plans for Erstwhile camps, almost collapsing from cancer. Stephen takes a very well paid but thankless job as an assistant to his old school friend Woody, who is a building contractor. Stephen meets Vivienne at an auction in Checkers , and Woody is awarded two new Erstwhile warehouses . Stephen uses the company computer and enters Viktor, whom he blames for Daniel's death, in a register so that he can be brought to the warehouse, which Bethany observes via an implant. Bethany struggles with her conscience at a memorial service for Daniel, but does not reveal her father.
6th	Episode 6	Episode 6	18th June 2019	5th March 2020	Lisa Mulcahy	Russell T Davies
Finally, in 2029, Bethany hesitantly confesses to Edith what she did to Stephen to Viktor, fearing that she will lose her implants for her illegal assistance to Edith. The freedom of the press is increasingly restricted, the BBC ceases operations because it loses its license. Muriel is extremely frustrated with the state of the world and complains first about her family, then about all of humanity, because many past, small moments of indifference are responsible for the current situation. Stephen breaks up with Elaine and buys a gun that he hides in his desk while he is working. Viktor wants to contact the family with a smuggled cell phone, but all radio signals are blocked by towers in the camp. Celeste manipulates Stephen, gets a job at Woody's company and wants to get information about the camps. Meanwhile, Rosie and her neighbors are outraged when their son and friends are not allowed into their apartment complex because curfew has passed. In the camp, Edith and other activists blow up the towers, which is why the inmates rush to the entrance gates and are threatened by the armed guards. At the same time, Stephen confronts Celeste, who is helping Edith hack the company's computers. He explains to her that he wanted to televise evidence of Vivienne's camp nationwide and then kill himself. When Woody storms into the office, Stephen instead shoots him in the leg. Through the signals released, the whole country sees the misery of the camps, including Rosie's action to break through the barrier with her delivery van to the applause of her neighbors. Edith collapses in the camp due to her illness, but is treated on time. Vivienne is charged with the murder of Erstwhile inmates and deposed, and the BBC resumes operations. Stephen is imprisoned for three years and starts a new life in Barcelona, he is still separated from Celeste, but has made up with her and his daughters. Rosie marries Jonjo, with whom she has a son whom she names Daniel. Five years later, in 2034, it turns out that all of the events so far were memories of Edith. She wants to upload her mind to a database based on water molecules , Bethany watches as a hologram in Muriel's house. As Edith dies, she says that her mind probably cannot be uploaded because the human mind is not made up of pure information. Her consciousness is eventually uploaded to Muriel's IPA Signor , but the series ends with the Lyons family asking whether this really worked.

reception

In the Internet Movie Database, the series achieved a rating of 8.4 out of ten stars based on 17,212 reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes , the series received a critical rating of 89 percent and an audience rating of 90 percent. At Metacritic , the series received an average critic rating of 78 out of 100 and an audience rating of 7.5 out of 10 (as of May 26, 2020).

“To tell a family story credibly against the greatest possible background, the impending demise of civilization, is actually doomed to failure. But with Years and Years , showrunner Russell T. Davies and Studio Canal subsidiary Red Production Company have succeeded in creating such a compelling, relevant series that, although it wants a lot, also delivers and therefore has to come to Germany as quickly as possible - a platform or a broadcaster unfortunately doesn't exist yet. The escalation of politics and society, combined with the creeping feeling of losing hard-won achievements, is not just a British phenomenon. This series ennobles Russell T. Davies and his flair for zeitgeist. This series is a warning to humanity, wrapped in a dramatic series dystopia that makes The Handmaid's Tale almost feel good television. "

- Thomas Lückerath : DWDL.de

Vanessa Schneider described the production for Bayerischer Rundfunk as “frighteningly close” to reality, with realism going through “marrow and bone”. Years and Years is a fascinating political science fiction series that does not focus on the power games of the powerful, but on the people who have to live with the political decisions in a "rather dark" near future. The series uses many small family dramas to show what the intangible fear of globalization is doing to people around the world. Russell T Davies strikes a similar tone as The Handmaid's Tale - The Maid's Report or Black Mirror , but keep Years and Years more realistic. It is "real torture" for the audience to experience how irrational, naive and short-sighted the actually clever and reflective Lyons behave in this hopeless situation. Fortunately, the absurd comedy loosens up the tense plot again and again, and Emma Thompson is “simply fabulous” in her role. Looking the other way is not possible with Years and Years , since the scenario of the series is so easy to imagine down to the last detail that it “really hurts” to watch the world go “to the dogs”.

Sophie Gilbert wrote in The Atlantic that there are similarities between Years and Years and Black Mirror , as both series dealt with dystopian future scenarios. However, the world is developing too fast for the imagination of Charlie Brooker , the inventor and author of Black Mirror , which is why the current episodes of the series are not about potential, but current problems such as addictive social networks . Russell T Davies, on the other hand, draws on "dark trends" of the last decade, the logical expansion of which he describes within five or 15 years. The series shows in a "crumbling and nervous" atmosphere how easy it is for a politician like Rook to come to power by responding to " nativist instincts" and at the same time, absurdly, "local annoyances" rather than global ones Focused on crises. Emma Thompson shines here as a rook who acts "threateningly and with absolute self-assurance", but the series leaves her with enough ambiguity to leave the viewer puzzled as to whether seizure of power is really her only goal.

Morgan Jeffery, an editor on Digital Spy , said Russel T Davies was addressing multiple topics at once, including Donald Trump's politics , over- Instagram consumption, overpriced coffee in London, and the British political talk show Have I Got News for You , the result is a “wild kaleidoscope ” as the series is both “breathtaking and dizzying”. Thanks to the “great” actors, the Lyons family is the “backbone” of the series, Davies also manages to process “hair-raising” elements in an “absolutely authentic family dynamic”. However, due to the abundance of topics, some storylines would be neglected, for example the wish of the character Bethany to become transhuman, as the impression arises that this is only intended for the entertainment of the audience. Although the series is "impressive", it seems a little "incoherent". Nonetheless, Years and Years is fascinating because of its "sheer unpredictability", even if a series that deals with "everything" may not be as compelling as a production that only deals with one particular topic.

Nominations

Critics' Choice Television Awards 2020

Nomination : Best Miniseries
Nomination : Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a TV Movie, for Russell Tovey
Nomination : Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a TV Movie, for Emma Thompson

GLAAD Media Awards 2020