‘Years and Years’: wake up and face our near future ahead

There are those series with which we fall in love at first sight; other stories so meaningful that make us dream about at night, and there are those ones we watch affixed like we’re running a marathon (especially cause we have nothing to do these times due the pandemic circumstances). But forget all these repetitive impressions and feeling about previous experiences watching series (and some have been so frequent). Years and Years starts in a low-profile way and turns into an impressive, intense, astonishing story that passes through our brains like a rotating machine, leads to personal philosophic reflexions and maybe sometimes will make you dizzy.

This HBO’s and BBC’s British coproduction reflects a tense period marked by geopolitics conflicts, economic crisis, deep changes on society brought by digital ultra-high technology, nationalism and xenophobia. No news so far, right? But the fact that it’s spotted by the routine and conflicts of a non-orthodox British family from nowadays across the entire decade, until 2032.

As the episodes goes by, we as spectators have the clear impression that it’s all about our issues, or those ones we’re up to face soon. And this is the most scary. Some of the characters, like a ultra conservative politician, seems to have been taken from our politics reality to some crucial moments spotted by the series.

Just don’t mind about the couple of questions coming up in your mind about the purposes of the series just after finishing the first episode. Years and Years is getting better and it makes completely sense as it goes by. By the perspective of four brothers, their partners, daughters and grandmother, the world around starts being deteriorated and making lives harder to live, raising conflicts among peoples and increasing unequality. All these affect each one’s life and, in some points, make they question theirselves about the past decisions they took for as citizens.

At the end, it’s inevitable not to be concerned. But, particularly, I felt a mix of excitement - about the wise prediction I was watching - with hopeness. It’s all up to ourselves: the world today is exactly what we as society have chosen to have, but there is always a wayout. And that’s properly inside the system. And I stop it here, because all beyond this is gonna be spoiler.