As 2029 arrives, British dictator Viv Rook shuts down the BBC, revoking its charter to operate. She bans a reporter from Downing Street, calling journalists the “enemy of the people,” borrowing a horrifying phrase from the Stalinist Soviet Union. She irritatedly dismisses their questions as “fake news” – a term that applies to any news she finds inconvenient.

Prime Minister Viv Rook (Emma Thompson) condemns “fake news” at a press conference. (HBO)

Back in Manchester, the Lyons family comes together for dinner with grandmother Muriel. The inimitable Anne Reid is gifted with a four-page monologue that serves as writer Russell T Davies’s passionate cri de coeur.

“It’s been tough this century,” Muriel says. As the new millennium began, the world seemed at peace, full of promise, “but I didn’t see all the clowns and monsters heading our way,” she says. “Tumbling over each other. Grinning. Dear God, what a carnival.”

The Lyons family gathers for dinner. (HBO)

The world has gone to hell, and she looks out on her incredulous family and tells them, “It’s all your fault… Every single thing that’s gone wrong, it’s your fault.”

She blames “Every single one of us. We can sit here, all day, every day, blaming other people, we blame the economy, and Europe, and the opposition, and the weather, and then we blame these vast sweeping tides of history like they’re out of our control. Like we’re so helpless and tiny and small. But it’s still our fault…”

Davies, through Muriel, is directly addressing his audience, making the core point of the entire miniseries. “This is the world we built,” Muriel says. We are all complicit, every last one of us, in what our society does in our name.

Viktor (Maxin Baldry) at the concentration camp. (HBO)

Young Bethany, moved by her grandmother’s passionate appeal, reveals to her aunt Edith that she knows where Viktor is. Her dad sent him to one of the concentration camps he helps manage, where Viv Rook is also sending those infected with the “monkey flu” sweeping the country, intending to control the camp’s population through “natural selection.”

Soon after, Stephen breaks up with his girlfriend Elaine and ends up living alone, in a squalid little room. His life has imploded, and he buys a black-market gun. A British writer like Davies would never imagine it would be easy and legal to purchase a firearm. That would be too horrifying and nightmarish even for this brutal fascist dystopia.

Celeste loses her job and is reduced to asking Stephen for help getting a job with his company. It’s a brilliantly crafted scene, because it fools Stephen and us into thinking it’s genuine. Celeste has actually been enlisted by Edith and Bethany to infiltrate Stephen’s company and expose the concentration camps.

Stephen (Rory Kinnear) listens as Celeste (T’Nia Miller) asks him for help finding a job. (HBO)

It’s a beautifully judged reveal, playing on Stephen’s assumption that women are dependent on men for their survival. Instead, we now get a narrative line of three strong, self-sufficient women (one black, one biracial, and one lesbian) teaming up to expose the barbarity of a company run by straight white eternal frat boys.

The dynamics of the two groups are uncommented upon in the scenes, but they don’t need to be. Davies’s cheerful middle finger to the racists, misogynists, and homophobes out there is unmistakable.

Edith (Jessica Hynes) and Fran (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) infiltrate the concentration camp. (HBO)

There follows an absolutely bravura 10-minute sequence, masterfully staged by director Lisa Mulcahy, which would be the summation of any ordinary miniseries, as three gripping action scenes are intercut.

Edith and Fran infiltrate Viktor’s concentration camp. Celeste sneaks into Stephen’s offices. And Rosie finds herself staring through the fence at her young son, left alone inside their public housing development after it’s put on lockdown.

“What happens next is absolutely my fault.” (HBO)

Rosie rebels. She calls Muriel and says she was right, things are our fault, and “what happens next is absolutely my fault” Then she drives her food truck past the guards and through the fence, aided by her son Lincoln, who operates the pedals. Davies is reminding us we can only overcome tyranny by working together and risking everything.

Meanwhile, as Edith and Fran rescue Viktor, their getaway truck is stopped by armed guards at the gates of the concentration camp. Edith and Fran pull out their cell phones to film the guards, but Viktor reminds them the “blink” that Viv demonstrated in episode 2 is being used on the whole camp, blocking all electronic signals.

Armed guards stop Edith and Fran as they rescue Viktor. (HBO)

Just when all seems lost, Edith reveals to Viktor that the operation is much, much bigger than any of them. Her fellow rebels launch a rocket at the “blink” tower and Edith, Fran, and Viktor raise their cell phones, along with the other inmates, and begin filming.

It’s a glorious and emotionally resonant victory for the characters in this fiction, because it speaks to the power of such footage in our own world. Every few days, another viral video sickeningly reminds us of the injustices faced by the oppressed in the United States.

Fran (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), Viktor (Maxim Baldry) and Edith (Jessica Hynes) broadcast footage of the concentration camp to the whole country. (HBO)

The sheer volume speaks to how many atrocities have happened until now, without the benefit of a record. How different would the world be if there had been video of Emmett Till or any of the nameless victims spread across the centuries?

Back in Manchester, Bethany turns to her government boss, smiles that angelic smile, and says, “You don’t own us anymore. We’re declaring independence.”

Bethany (Lydia West) joyously sends the feed from the camps to every television in Britain. (HBO)

She and her fellow programmers take the cell phone footage from the concentration camps and beam it onto every television set in Britain, forcing the population to confront what is being done in their name.

As this epic scene plays out, it’s triumphant for the characters, but as Fran shouts to her audience across Britain that “these people are refugees and asylum seekers, kept here with no rights, no health care… left to die,” it is also a call to arms by Davies. This story is playing out now, in our own world.

Viktor (Maxim Baldry) films the guards at the concentration camp. (HBO)

We are all complicit in crimes committed in our name. It’s not enough to shake our heads and say we disagree. We must stand up and be counted against injustice and hatred and bigotry, or we are just as guilty as the prison guards who patrol the fences and shield their faces when the cameras are turned on them. Stripped of the armor of power and anonymity, they know full well they are part of something monstrous and wrong.

Stephen races to his office and catches Celeste searching through files. Davies telescopes all the political and social conflicts of the entire series into one human interaction – a woman desperate to expose atrocities, who still sees the humanity in her fallen ex-husband, and a man battling to retain his last sliver of decency.

Stephen (Rory Kinnear) confronts Celeste (T’Nia Miller). (HBO)

One of the most gut-wrenching scenes in the entire series plays out, masterfully performed by Kinnear and Miller, as Stephen turns ferociously on Celeste and pulls out the gun he bought. We genuinely think he intends to slaughter the mother of his children until he reveals he bought it to shoot himself, after releasing the documents he’s been collecting about the camps. He knows he’s a monster, and Celeste talks him into putting down his gun.

Back at the concentration camp, Edith has liberated the inmates and broadcast proof of the atrocities to the country. Now she collapses, her ravaged body giving in at last.

Edith (Jessica Hynes) collapses after liberating the camp. (HBO)

As Murray Gold’s theme grabs hold of us, we hurtle ahead through years and years one final time. 2030 arrives and the BBC is switched back on. The police arrest Viv Rook for murder. Rosie and Jonjo marry and have a child. Then, suddenly, we’re yanked out of the familiar montage and into an incomprehensible setting.

Edith sits in a gown, tended to by technicians. We’ve leapt ahead to 2034. At this point, Davies’s series, which was already a brilliant piece of social and political drama, becomes a transcendent masterpiece.

Edith (Jessica Hynes) at the treatment center in 2034. (HBO)

In its final 10 minutes, Davies turns his series into nothing less than a statement on the human condition. It’s reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s audacious, misunderstood masterpiece A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, which similarly wrenched the audience onto another plane in its last 10 minutes for a finale of equally indescribable beauty.

Bethany was fascinated with “transhumanism” in the early episodes, but she has found her place in 2034, integrated with technology but happily living as a human woman with her loved ones. No, it is Edith, dying from the effects of the nuclear bombing in episode 1, who was destined to become transhuman first.

Only by transcending her rapidly deteriorating physical form can her consciousness – her soul – survive. She is being uploaded to the cloud. Bethany almost jealously says that Edith will be “coded on to molecules of water. You’ll be a brand new form of life.”

Edith (Jessica Hynes) prepares to become transhuman. (HBO)

The technicians credit Edith with bringing down Viv, but Edith modestly says there were other uprisings that night across Britain, she just helped start something that was inevitable. And she reminds us that the backers who financed Viv’s rise and supported her regime were never caught.

Edith explains how she forgave Stephen for his crimes, just as South Africans worked to forgive one another, just as Protestants and Catholics struggled to forgive each other in Northern Ireland, just as Croats and Bosnians and Serbs struggle to forgive one another. Edith’s placid smile reminds us it’s no use carrying pain and anger and hatred, no matter how justified they may be. The only way forward is through forgiveness.

Edith (Jessica Hynes) forgives a despondent Stephen (Rory Kinnear). (HBO)

Bethany cannot bear to watch Edith’s last moments and goes downstairs to be with her family. She passes Lincoln on the stairs. We saw him born as the series opened and watched as he began to understand his identity, a tiny but powerful subplot. Lincoln has now transitioned into a beautiful 15-year-old girl.

Muriel’s house is bathed in a warm, hopeful light like we’ve never seen before as the entire family waits to see if Edith has successfully uploaded. Bethany hugs and kisses her entire family, including her father. Finally, the full value of casting the serene Lydia West pays off, her inherent joy makes this scene land with inexpressible weight.

Bethany (Lydia West) walking with Lincoln (Aiden Li). (HBO)

Left alone with the technicians, her life fading away, Edith speaks her final thoughts. Davies takes a colossal risk in this sequence, writing lines so nakedly emotional they could come off as trite or even comical.

However, he has been gifted in Jessica Hynes with a performer equal to this material. Every choice Hynes makes here is bold and audacious and perfect. She performs her final monologue stripped of the armor of maturity, filled with pure childish wonder and joy, saying she has finally realized what life is about. The memories being uploaded are not really what she consists of. Instead, as her life fades from her, she says with heartbreaking purity, “That’s what I’m becoming now. Love. I am love.”

“I am love.” (HBO)

Drama, at its best, connects us with our common humanity. It ennobles us, making us momentarily capable of seeing what we could be. Davies has taken us through the most soul-shredding of agonies so he can deliver us here, to a place of pure serenity.

A final card simply dedicates the series to Andrew Smith. Smith was Davies’s partner of nearly 20 years and his husband of six years. Smith passed away just one month before Years and Years began filming last fall. Davies has said he wrote much of the series as Smith was dying, and their love inhabits every frame. It is a profound tribute.

The Lyons family waits to see if Edith has successfully become transhuman. (HBO)

There have been countless tales of the rise of dictatorships, factual and fictional, before, but they have invariably been about the people at the center of them: the dictators or their inner circle. Davies’s stroke of genius was recognizing that most people wouldn’t see the signs of a dictatorship until it was too late.

He exploits the strengths of the miniseries format to tell a warm, funny, poignant, humanist tale of an average Manchester family that is actually just one giant sleight-of-hand trick. With each episode, Viv Rook moves almost imperceptibly from white noise on the fringes of the lives of the Lyons family to the central figure in their destinies.

It’s a masterstroke of narrative balance, allowing us to see how a dictator can rise without being noticed, because we have not been noticing her either, too distracted by the mundane insanity of everyday life.

The BBC returns to the air to report on the arrest of Viv Rook. (HBO)

Years and Years also displays a staggering level of integrated worldbuilding. It imagines technologies that will dominate life in the future, altering it beyond recognition, but presents them as banal and ordinary, because that’s how the characters see them. It’s a level of conceptualization that equals Steven Spielberg’s brilliant Minority Report.

The series is a triumph on every level, from Davies’s extraordinary script, to the uniformly exceptional, emotionally unguarded performances; to the skillful direction; to the subtle but rapidly evolving production design; to the gorgeous, sweeping, melodic score from frequent Davies collaborator Murray Gold.

“Beware those men.” (HBO)

As the months have passed since it was filmed, it has only become more prophetic and vitally urgent. Toward the end of the series, a new politician with a moronic spinning tie appears on TV to replace Viv Rook. Muriel warns young Lincoln, “Beware those men. The jokers and the tricksters and the clowns. They will laugh us into hell.”

It is Davies’s warning to us all. It is the quote he chillingly and horrifyingly scrawled across a newspaper and posted on Instagram the day Boris Johnson was declared Prime Minister last week.

Will we live up to our potential, and deny these monsters the power they seek? Only time can tell…

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