Years and Years (TV Mini Series) Episode 5 (2019) User Reviews

Oh, Russell...

[W011y4m5 · 7/10 · 11 June 2019]

Beginning to genuinely wonder whether Russell T. Davies has an ounce of originality still left in his writing after this episode of Years & Years. Still think he's undoubtedly incredible but he blatantly copied & pasted from his Dr Who Series 1 finale with his first story in Wizards V Aliens (a show he also created) & now this... Yet again, he's plagiarised his own earlier work in order to write this series, which was a direct rip-off of Torchwood: Miracle Day & his Season 4 Doctor Who episode "Turn Left" - even going so far as to copy the dirty bomb / relocation storyline from it, as well as the reopening of concentration camps. It's enormously frustrating because he's such a phenomenal writer & I know he can be so much better than that... Re-hashing ideas you've already developed over a decade ago is lazy writing & I never thought I'd be accusing someone I admire so much of being guilty of that either, but I was disappointingly sat going "oh, it's Turn Left again!" repeatedly. Dirty bombs irradiating cities? Tick. Large swathes of people being relocated to other parts of the country? Tick. Sharing houses? Tick. Opening concentration camps? Tick. I'd love it if I hadn't already seen it all before from him. That's not to say the episode didn't have its moments; Vivienne Rook (which is a name ALSO copied from one of his other Doctor Who episodes) has a deliciously unsettling monologue about history repeating itself was worryingly prescient & foreboding & there were some beautifully dark sequences but the absence of anything unique ultimately felt like the unavoidable elephant in the room by the conclusion of this week's addition.

Eerily realistic

[roberthaack · 10/10 · 3 October 2019]

So many of the events depicted in the show could easily occur in the near future. Watching Viv Rock casually convincing a room full of people that genocide is a natural solution to a problem is one of those scenes that will stick with me.

Too close for Comfort of what the future will really look like

[kcjofun3 · 10/10 · 23 July 2019]

Honestly, I still haven't forgiven the writers of the last episode...it literally broke my heart. This week was nothing but brilliant. I've never been able to watch TV without multitasking, but you had it so I couldn't take my eyes away! Steven (with a "V") has never moved me so much that I could literally feel his feelings...the good, the bad, & especially the evil. Bravo! I'll be awaiting your Emmy Nominations next year! You'll be full of them.

Episode 5

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 18 June 2019]

With Daniel deemed dead. Stephen takes his frustrations out on Viktor. Unfortunately in a devious nasty way once Stephen hooks up with wide boys who get an important government contract.

Viv Rook's Britain is not a new oasis, more a clapped out chaotic dictatorship. There is no bright new dawn as the Lyons discover.

There are heavy rains, a widening underclass and areas of towns and cities being fenced off.

Russell T Davies has mined the kind of Dystopian cruel government that existed in Torchwood: Children of Earth. We see a moment when Rook indicates that she might be controlled by others but is that the electorate?

The penultimate episode certainly gets dark and twisted. It is not an helpful future and Stephen acknowledges it in this episode. The generation born in the 1980s who were progressive, liberal and had it all but they are going back on those values.

Gone downhill

[harpervauxjackson · 4/10 · 11 June 2019]

Been really enjoying this series, but I found this episode disappointing. The series seems to have gone off track, and the innovations which I loved at first seem more and more far fetched. I don't believe society and our civilisation could change to this degree in ten years