Sliding Towards an Uncertain Future. Years and Years and the Ever-Closer Dystopia

"Years and Years" (Bbc, 2019) is a six-episodes miniseries created by Russell T. Davies, following the many regular and exceptional events happening to a British family fifteen years in the future, as well as the many entanglements between their lives and a growingly dystopian world, affected by wars, pandemics, populisms, and conspiracies. This contribution deals with some distinctive traits of this television series, trying to highlight its originality: 1. the role played by the public figure of its creator in presenting, shaping, and building attention towards the title; 2. the many genres at play, with an original mixture of sci-fi and drama with both the narrative structure of family soaps and the distinctive tone of black humour, political satire and some comedy; 3. some distribution and reception paths, anticipating in a way, and later dealing with Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, in a sort of indirect prefiguration.