Years and Years review, episode 4: Frighteningly plausible – like looking in the rear view window

If 10 years ago you’d been told that the American reality TV star Donald Trump would be elected president of the United States, be feted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace, accused of collusion with the Russians, and had his genitals described as being “like the mushroom character in Mario Kart” by a former porn star mistress… well, you’d probably be a bit taken aback.

Such is the skill in Years and Years (BBC1), Russell T Davies’s vision of Britain in the 2020s, that it is, mostly, frighteningly plausible. The story of the near future is told through the declining fortunes of the extended Lyons family, though the presiding star of proceedings is Vivienne “Viv” Rook, as played superbly by Emma Thompson. She is a repulsive, manipulative, populist politician who succeeds in gaslighting a whole country (us) as leader of the Four Star Party (on account of her using the kind of four-letter words that she considers “ordinary” people use).

This week we’re up to 2027 and yet another general election (plus ça change). The realignment/death of British politics nears completion with the no-longer-so-shocking election of this radical, freewheeling policy-free woman as prime minister. It also marks the final debasement of public life, with the arrival of “deep fakes”. This is where unscrupulous, unknown forces (but we can guess who) use social media to propagate videos using CGI and avatar models of their political enemies. In this case, the propaganda consists of a facsimile leader of the Classic Labour Party, telling us he’d like to eat the rich; and his utterly false, but visually convincing, Conservative counterpart saying, she’d prefer to eat the poor. Reacting to the vids on her own TV channel, Rook at first deplores the fabrications, before turning to the camera and remarking: “All the same, they really did say that, didn’t they?”

It is not quite as elegant a piece of spin as you might find in the average speech by Boris Johnson, but, well, who can say what sort of rubbish we’ll be swallowing in a decade? Chlorinated chicken and genetically modified corn flakes, probably.

We sense that some of the Lyons family, suffering through financial calamities and personal problems, are warming to the increasingly totalitarian noises emanating from Rook. Edith (Jessica Hynes), for example, allows her hardline green instincts and disgust at the establishment to seep into sympathy for the way Viv Rook is “shaking up” the system: “Democracy was a very nice idea for a while and now it’s worn out.”

Meanwhile, Stephen (Rory Kinnear), a now-skint ex-banker, suffers the humiliation of having his partner Celeste (T’Nia Miller) describe in brutal detail his extramarital affair to his kids and entire family. And then his lover Elaine (Rachel Logan) turns out to be a bit of a bully and a bore. Enough to drive anyone to fascism, I suppose.

The most unexpected storyline was involving lovers Daniel (Russell Tovey) and his partner Viktor Goraya (Maxim Baldry). We’ve followed Daniel’s astonishing devotion to his Ukrainian refugee boyfriend, who has been deported, re-deported and trafficked, officially and otherwise, across most of Europe. Such is Daniel’s love for Viktor that it always seems he would give his life for him. So it transpires. As they attempt to cross the English Channel to escape Viktor’s persecution, Daniel drowns when their overcrowded dinghy sinks just off the coast. Viktor survives. Killing off such a major character in the drama only two-thirds of the way through the story (The Bodyguard/Keely Hawes-style) is doubly shocking and, thus, effective because it violates the usual dramatic convention that the less central character (here Viktor) will be jettisoned first.

It’s supremely moving, though, just for what took place, and the disturbing sight of Daniel’s pale lifeless cadaver, drained of life and passion in the cold light of morning – and a further trauma reverberating through the disintegrating Lyons clan.

We sense that Viktor may soon find himself blamed for what happened to Daniel and, perhaps, become one sort of symbol or scapegoat for the cynical and cruel Rook to make political capital out of, as a scheming foreigner or some such.

In just the few weeks since Years and Years began, we’ve had the murmurings of a global recession, a record number of migrants rescued off Ramsgate, and Nigel Farage winning a national election, while a reversal of Roe v Wade, another of the drama’s prophecy, is already at hand. Sometimes, as we speed through time and space, Years and Years feels not so much like looking at the road ahead, but in the rear view mirror.