'Years and years', a dystopian and tragicomic comedy

During the first half hour of the first episode of this British series it is possible that some spectators keep raised an eyebrow, among other reasons for the suspicion of opportunism of their approach : the portrait of a multiracial family triple and composed of an almost Socratic grandmother and almost centenary, with a health that makes it invulnerable over the years; his gay grandson, in love with a Ukrainian refugee; her activist and lesbian granddaughter - with a black couple - her disabled granddaughter who happily carries the consequences of her spina bifida, single mother of two children with two parents; his conventionally adulterous grandson, his teenage great-granddaughter who wishes to become a digital entity and his Anglo-Chinese great-grandson who wishes to become a girl. Too artificially contrived, perhaps, the group portrait . Too much calculation, perhaps, in the heterogeneity of the cast. Apart from that, it squeaked at the beginning its tone of farce, with the foreseeable links of affection and disaffection - treated in a very epidermal way - between the components of that family of Manchester that more seems an exhaustive catalog of universal life options.

The fear, then, of a very reused cliché in any genre of fiction: the family as a funnily problematic tribe . The course of the series I fear that it does not completely remedy the shortcomings of the specifically intra-family plot. In my opinion, its greatest success is not so much in the development of the human factor as in the sociological factors that it points out.

From that half an hour a little disconcerting and somewhat discouraging, Years and years becomes more than an exhibition of archetypes: a slightly dystopian and slightly tragicomic comedy , a credible forecast of our immediate future, in the post era Brexit, hypertechnology, big data, virtual finance and the rise of demagogues to power.

As an emblem of the demagogue, there we have a brilliant Emma Thompson in the role of a fascistoid, xenophobic, chabacana and patriot businesswoman, with a vocation of professional policy, who believes she has the secret to make her country a paradise: a place in the that the cars do not park on the sidewalk so that their elderly mother - theirs in particular - does not find obstacles when walking, a place where parents can control the technopathy of their offspring through a wifi inhibitor, a kingdom more or less united in which what matters to you is that they collect the garbage from the neighborhood and in which you import a whistle instead - she expresses it in a more crude way - what happens for example in Palestine, etc. A speech, in short, that allies the defense of autarchy and simplistic pragmatism through the use of global idiocy for the benefit of idiocy itself . Seen the seen, some excellent wicker to spend the night at number 10 Downing Street.

The idiocy, by the way, would be the main theme of this series set in the near future that, except in small details, seems a trace of our present : the massive access to information that paradoxically derives in a massive disinformation, the prevalence of the manipulated news - or directly false - about the contrasted information, the hot potato of the refugees, the passivity to the consequences of climate change, the fat brush populism as a substitute for ideologies, the political management supplanted by the inoperative verbiage, technology as a tool for mass control and the conversion of virtual reality into dry reality. On the other hand, it does not overlook something that we have already verified: money as a spooky entity that can suddenly vanish into the air without leaving a trace, except for the trail of ruin that leaves not only in the most vulnerable social strata, but also in the middle classes, who are suddenly impoverished thanks to a system that does not succeed in controlling the greed of financial elites, either to the detriment of the survival of the system that allows them to develop their greed: the neoliberal arcadia turned into hell Save who can.

The futuristic elements - the action goes from 2019 to 2034 - are treated with subtlety, at least until the final minutes, in which the director decides to enter fully into the field of science fiction through technological advances that, although There is no doubt that one will be reached someday, they are somewhat squeaky - and sweetenedly melodramatic in addition - within the general climate of the narration, being more characteristic of Black mirror than of this family tragicomedy.

The dystopian degree of Years and years does not reach the extreme levels of other series such as The Tale of the Maid or 1983 , let's take the case, but, perhaps for that reason, it is disturbingly plausible .

As a curiosity, it is taken for granted that in Spain, in the immediate future, the socialist government will be overthrown by a far-left revolution. And it can be assumed that without possible pacts.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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