Television series

Years and Years

Name: Years and Years
Genre: Drama, Family, Science Fiction
Released: 2019
Cast: Emma Thompson, Rory Kinnear, T'Nia Miller, Jessica Hynes, Ruth Madeley

Family drama

Years and Years spans fifteen turbulent years in one Manchester family's life while Britain lurches through banking collapse, refugee crises, AI panic and creeping authoritarianism. Russell T Davies fuses kitchen-sink realism with speculative near-future dread, so Christmas dinners and general elections carry the same emotional weight. It's messy, political and deeply humane — for anyone who wants their family drama to also feel like a warning.

TVMaze rating

4.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like a family saga stretched across years, where the big political weather arrives through kitchen-table arguments and the sci-fi stays quietly unsettling rather than flashy.

Skip it if you want escapism, since it spends much of its run making your stomach tighten, and a few speeches land more like lectures than conversation.

What it asks of you: Patience with a slow build and six hour-long episodes that linger on ordinary domestic detail before the larger picture snaps into focus.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Black Mirror2011

Each episode imagines how a single piece of technology could quietly poison an ordinary life, echoing the same slow-motion dread Years and Years builds across a whole family.

But It's anthology format, so you lose the deep character investment, and some episodes land far harder than others.

The Handmaid's Tale2017

A speculative future built from real anxieties, following one woman's fight against a theocratic regime — the same nerve of 'this could actually happen' running through Years and Years.

But It's relentlessly grim season after season, with far less humour or domestic warmth to leaven the dread.

Utopia2014

A British conspiracy thriller with the same paranoid pulse — ordinary people swept into world-altering events, shot through with dark humour and sudden, shocking violence.

But It's far more stylised and thriller-paced, trading family intimacy for genre plotting and gore.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Years and Years

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Threads1984

Same British lineage of using one family's domestic detail to dramatise national catastrophe — Threads did it first, and far more starkly, thirty-five years earlier.

A devastating BBC docudrama imagining nuclear war hitting Sheffield through the eyes of ordinary families, decades before Years and Years used the same trick on slower catastrophes.

But It's bleak beyond mercy, shot like a nature documentary of human suffering, with none of Davies's wit to soften it.

Chernobyl2019

A precise, unbearable account of institutional failure and its human cost — ordinary people caught inside a system spinning out of control, exactly as the Lyons family are.

But It's a single contained crisis, tightly focused, without the multi-decade family sprawl of Years and Years.

A Very English Scandal2018

Russell T Davies again, this time turning a real political scandal into something tender and absurd — proof he can do intimate history as skilfully as speculative future.

But It's a narrow period two-hander with no science fiction element and much smaller canvas.

Cucumber2015

Davies's earlier family-and-friends drama follows gay men in Manchester through heartbreak and ageing with the same unguarded emotional honesty he gives the Lyons clan.

But It's grounded entirely in the present day, with none of the speculative dread or future shock.

The Capture2019

A tense conspiracy thriller about surveillance and deepfakes, sharing the same unease about technology outrunning ethics that flickers through every Years and Years subplot.

But It's plot-driven and paranoid rather than character-led, with much less warmth or humour.

Brexit: The Uncivil War2019

A dramatisation of the referendum campaign that captures the exact political vertigo Years and Years is reacting to — chaos, spin, and a country arguing with itself.

But It's a single event dramatised straight, without any speculative reach or generational scope.

56 Up2012

Years and Years fictionalises what this documentary does for real: tracking one group across decades to show how history quietly rewrites ordinary lives from the inside.

The longest-running documentary experiment in television, revisiting the same British people every seven years since 1964 to watch class, ambition and disappointment play out for real.

But It's slow and unscripted, occasionally mundane — more life than story, the opposite of drama's forward momentum.

The Death of Stalin2017

Both use satire and family-adjacent intimacy — aides, relatives, hangers-on — to show how authoritarian populism curdles the personal into the absurd.

A pitch-black comedy about a regime collapsing into farce, proving political dread and outright silliness can share a screen — much as Vivienne Rook's rise plays like tragedy wearing a clown nose.

But It's a full comedy, broad and cruel, with none of the earnest family stakes that anchor Years and Years.