Binge-r #164: Years and Years + For All Mankind
Party Monster: Emma Thompson (Vivienne Rook) in Years and Years
YEARS AND YEARS
Streaming Service: SBS on Demand
Availability: Two episodes now streaming, new one added each Wednesday
Not too far into this recognisably everyday British dystopia, which looks at the world’s unravelling through the lens of a Manchester clan, I stopped recording the bad things that come to pass. My incomplete list includes Trump being re-elected, Russia annexing Ukraine, a nation firing a nuclear missile, the North Pole melting, a financial crisis, and a cheery domestic robot being used as a sex surrogate. The six part series is a primer on how things fall apart and the centre can’t hold. It is superficially terrifying because it feels initially plausible, even if that plausibility stems not just from the detachment of the Lyons family, but a lack of belief in humanity’s ability to claw anything back. It’s expertly outlined clickbait.
Creator Russell T. Davies is a proven powerhouse, with Queer as Folk, Doctor Who, and A Very English Scandal among his numerous credits. His touch with using domestic moments to sketch the world’s evolution is exemplary – see how teenage technology addict Bethany (Lydia West) refuses to believe information from her mother, Celeste (T’Nia Miller), and instead asks the household virtual assistant. Her father, Stephen (Rory Kinnear), a financial advisor, is the oldest of four diverse children, who chime in on family calls and come together to celebrate the birthday of their ageing grandmother, Muriel Deacon (Ann Reid), who has a vituperative tongue and makes tea during missile crises.
In a timeline running to 2034, the quartet struggle with misfortune, most notably Daniel (Russell Tovey), a council housing officer who falls in love with Ukrainian refugee Viktor (Maxim Baldry). Their commentator is a populist independent politician, Vivienne Rook (Emma Thompson), whose acrid charm and seductive appeals to the camera rise her up the political ladder. The narrative’s tactic is to show an alarming development, such as Stephen’s wheelchair-bound sister Rosie (Ruth Madeley) becoming a supporter of Rook’s, but to focus on another member’s reaction rather than exploring the cause. You could argue that a lack of understanding is central to our world, and that’s exploited in this fiction version, but Years and Years doesn’t quite hold together. In the end, a list isn’t enough for a compelling show.
Space Odyssey: Joel Kinnaman (Ed Baldwin) in For All Mankind
FOR ALL MANKIND (Apple TV+, all 10 episodes now streaming): The pacing is slow but the storytelling is mostly satisfying on this alternate history drama, which begins in 1969 when to the world’s surprise Russia successfully puts an astronaut on the moon a month prior to the scheduled Apollo 11 mission. The recrimination and renewed space race competition open up fictional new tangents from the third episode – a class of female astronauts starts at NASA in 1970 – but the show is initially content to observe characters such as square-jawed mission commander Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and his wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten) alongside historic figures (hello to Colm Feore’s Wernher von Braun). Co-creator Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica, Outlander) is intrigued by astronaut lore, with The Right Stuff never far from reach, but he’s also willing to look at the period detail and compromises with a questioning eye. There are numerous strands here, some of which won’t flower until the already commissioned second season, but for now this continues Apple’s debut run of solid streaming shows. Next Friday: Dickinson.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: Francis Ford Coppola’s 1980s output is diverse and underappreciated, with Jeff Bridges in the title role Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988, 110 minutes) is a pioneer against the system period drama about the real life 1940s car designer; Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies (2008, 128 minutes) is a tidy espionage thriller that has a rarely together Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe advancing the CIA’s cause in the Middle East.
New on SBS on Demand: With a career that stretches back to the 1980s, Leos Carax is a renegade of the French cinema, with all the mystery and passion of his work wended through the wild, wonderful Holy Motors (2012, 116 minutes), a compelling day in the life of a performance artist (the great Denis Lavant) whose episodic encounters speak to political, cinematic, and aesthetic truths.
New on Stan: Close to Nicole Kidman’s finest performance Birth (2004, 101 minutes) is an icy, arresting drama about belief from Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin) where Kidman’s widow is confronted by a 10-year-old boy claiming to be the reincarnation of her late husband; Indecent Proposal (1993, 117 minutes) is your bad – and I mean bad – 1990s weekend movie with Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, and Robert Redford.
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