'YEARS & YEARS': HBO June 24. Dystopian Near Future, Nationalism, Politics, Emma Thompson

Last edited Sat Jun 22, 2019, 10:24 PM - Edit history (2)

(1 min) Trailer. 'Years & Years' premieres June 24 on HBO. Created by Russell T. Davies and starring Emma Thompson, Anne Reid and Rory Kinnear, Years & Years is an epic saga that takes an ordinary family and catapults them through the next 15 years (2019-2034). As society changes, faster than ever, the Lyons will experience everything we hope for in the future, and everything we fear. They’ll fall in and out of love, and grow old, fall apart and come back together, while constantly looking forward. #HBO #YearsAndYears
- Variety TV Review, June 22, 2019, https://variety.com/2019/tv/reviews/years-and-years-review-emma-thompson-hbo-1203243714/ Give HBO’s latest drama 6 hours of your time, and it’ll tell you the story of the 21st century. That’s the promise made by “Years and Years,” which airs on the cabler starting June 24 after a run on BBC One in the UK. The first episode begins in May 2019, and subsequent installments push deep into the 2020s, far enough to reveal that our future history looks less like an arc towards progress than a whirlpool of entropy.

And though Emma Thompson steals scenes as an ambitious nationalist politician whose brashness and ease with the mechanisms of celebrity could generate comparisons to both Brit Boris Johnson or to at least one familiar American figure, it’s not her story. To its credit, “Years and Years” — among the most emotionally involving, and best, series to air so far this year — keeps its aperture narrow even as the world keeps forcing its way in. This is, above all, the story of a family, one whose ordinariness makes them a powerful vehicle for telling the future.

- Highly Recommended: This BBC/HBO Mini-Series About a Dystopian Near Future (The next 15 Yrs.), Daily Kos Review, June 22, 2019. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/22/1866618/-Highly-Recommended-This-BBC-HBO-Mini-Series-About-a-Dystopian-Near-Future?utm_campaign=recent