As 2027 begins, the Lyons family celebrates the New Year together at grandmother Muriel’s elegantly decaying old house in Manchester.

The Lyons family rings in the new year, 2027. (HBO)

Daniel and Viktor join by FaceTime from Madrid, where they’re celebrating their engagement. Viktor is a refugee there, with no hope of being readmitted to the UK. Daniel tells the family he’s going to become a Spanish resident so the two of them can be together.

They only have a few hours to celebrate, though, before the sounds of street fighting drift into their tenement room. A far-left extremist insurrection topples the Spanish socialist government. The new revolutionary regime announces a policy of repatriation for all non-citizen residents.

Viktor (Maxim Baldry) and Daniel (Russell Tovey) toast the new year in Madrid. (HBO)

This astounds Daniel, but Viktor points out, “You go far right, you go far left, eventually you meet in the middle.” The far-right government in neighboring France won’t admit Viktor, and a return to Ukraine would likely mean death as a gay man.

The regular musical montage takes us ahead, deeper into 2027, through further European chaos. Greece exits the EU. Italy’s government collapses and martial law is declared. Hungary goes bankrupt. As Viv Rook says on her Four Star Channel chat show, “The whole world is on fire!”

“The whole world is on fire!” (HBO)

Under President Mike Pence, the United States swerves further to the right. It bans the use of Spanish in public places, causing the UN to threaten to remove its headquarters from American soil. Same-sex marriage is rescinded in the U.S. and the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Edith joins violent street protests in Washington and gets sent back to the UK, banned for life from reentering the U.S.

Edith complains the British government is doing nothing about her case. Daniel complains that the UK hasn’t responded to the situation in Spain, either. Rosie rolls her eyes, sick of hearing about Viktor’s plight. As Davies has boldly crafted her, Rosie still only has true sympathy for herself and her immediate family.

With Labour and the Conservatives hopelessly tied and deadlocked, and Viv Rook’s miniscule group of deciding votes in the middle, the hung parliament is proving utterly ineffective. Edith points out that “It’s our fault. We voted them in.” “There’s always Vivienne Rook,” Rosie replies. “Viv could smash the system!”

“Viv could smash the system!” (HBO)

Rosie still truly believes Viv has the potential to deliver change. Rosie combines a naïve hope in Viv’s honesty with a complete disillusionment she shares with Edith after decades of being promised change by conventional politicians from both sides who haven’t delivered.

Stephen points out that “years ago, we used to think the news was boring… now we hide.” “It’s like in school,” Edith remarks, “they’d tell you about the olden days, with Sun Kings and plagues and people electing pigs. And now it’s all come back. It’s happening again.”

Having lost her job at the school cafeteria due to mechanization, Rosie buys a food truck with help from grandmother Muriel. Rosie gains a boyfriend in the process, the van’s former owner, the adorably harmless Jonjo.

Daniel (Russell Tovey) asks Edith (Jessica Hynes) to help smuggle Viktor out of Spain. (HBO)

As the family celebrates Rosie’s new business with burgers from the van, Daniel asks Edith for help getting a fake passport to smuggle Viktor out of Spain before he’s deported back to his death in Ukraine. Daniel wants to bring him into Britain illegally.

Viktor would be a criminal the rest of his life in the UK, but Tovey achingly conveys Daniel’s desperation, stripped of all pride, as he says they could move to a new town, where nobody knows them, and “he’d just be my boyfriend. I’d earn the money and he could be safe. That’s better than a death sentence. Isn’t it?”

“He’d just be my boyfriend.” (HBO)

As the refugee crisis suddenly becomes real for Daniel, Edith has a brilliantly observed moment in Davies’s script. She calls Daniel out for saying that surely they can save Viktor, because they’re “not stupid.” She points out that neither are the rest of the refugees in the world.

Daniel stresses it’s the system he is railing against, a system designed to protect a nation against an influx of scary foreigners. Daniel is learning, firsthand, that each of them is just a terrified, desperate human being.

Meanwhile, as they have this conversation, there’s a gorgeous little grace note, when Rosie’s kids Lee and Lincoln run by. Daniel notices that, in addition to the bows Edith gave Lincoln in the previous episode, which he has worn ever since, he’s now wearing a long, flowing t-shirt that runs down to his knees. “Are we calling that a t-shirt or are we calling that a dress?” Daniel asks.

It’s a glib, dismissive line, an observation from the man who, unknown to his family, voted Conservative in the previous episode. Edith warmheartedly replies, “I don’t think it matters,” and Daniel truly looks at Lincoln.

Lee (Callum Woolford) and Lincoln (Aaron Ansari) at their mom’s food truck. (HBO)

He seems to genuinely realize what is happening and how judgmental he’s being, just as people (like Lincoln’s own mother, Rosie) always judge and condescend to him for loving a refugee.

Suddenly, Daniel’s face softens, and Tovey exquisitely conveys his acceptance of Lincoln, as he says that the dress doesn’t matter, “No. He looks beautiful.” Lincoln is a tiny character in one way, he never even really speaks throughout the entire 6-hour miniseries. However, his birth started the narrative in motion, and we have been following him, almost unnoticed, the entire time.

Only now is Daniel acknowledging that Lincoln may have a level of complexity he never really saw before. The moment is beautifully observed by Davies, showing he’s skilled enough not only to balance multiple central narrative lines, but to gently, effortlessly thread another right through the middle of it all.

Edith (Jessica Hynes) arranges Viktor’s escape. (HBO)

Edith and her girlfriend Fran, Daniel’s neighbor who works as a storyteller/singer, arrange a dangerous escape for Viktor, so he can flee Spain before it begins repatriating people. The Foreign Office has advised against travel to Spain, due to the ongoing revolution and political chaos, but Fran’s arts group is going there on tour in a few months.

Edith points out that artists have always gone into war zones, and the authorities never pay any attention, assuming they’re naïve, idealistic idiots. Edith arranges with Fran for Viktor to hide on Fran’s bus on the return trip.

Meanwhile, after a vote of no confidence in the hung parliament, another general election is set, and a new law is passed, making voting compulsory, as it is today in some countries, like Australia and Brazil. Nobody knows what result the massively increased turnout will have on the election.

Viv (Emma Thompson) is interviewed about “deepfakes” on her television channel. (HBO)

Soon after, a rash of “deepfake” videos spring up. Instead of the comparatively benign faked celebrity “deepfake” porn we see today, “deepfakes” have morphed into a nightmarish political tool.

In one “deepfake” video, the leader of the Conservative party says all foreigners should be expelled or executed. Another video shows the head of the Labour party calling for the execution of the rich and the redistribution of their wealth. No matter how much the two people proclaim their innocence, the damage is done. The words have entered the public consciousness, and their truth is irrelevant.

After Mitt Romney’s candidacy was partially sunk by a leaked video, and selectively edited videos were used to annihilate the ACORN voting organization, Davies is only taking us a tiny, frighteningly plausible step further to completely faked videos having the same impact.

“They really said those things.” (HBO)

Viv Rook appears on her Four Star Network and nominally denounces the videos, saying, “Well of course they’re fake videos. Everyone can see they’re not real.” But then she turns to the camera and says, “But all the same. They really said those things. Didn’t they?” Daniel watches and winces, yet again doomed to be alone in recognizing Viv’s evil genius.

As campaigning for the general election enters its final week, Daniel empties his bank account and travels to Madrid, where he and Viktor reunite to plot his escape. Viktor sweetly reveals that, all this time, “I kept your front door key, to get me home.”

“I kept your front door key.” (HBO)

Davies’s exceptional skill with dialogue elevates the scene enormously, as do Tovey and Baldry’s emotionally raw performances. Viktor says he’s actually a tiny bit surprised Daniel came; he always seemed a bit boring, but Viktor quickly adds that’s something he loves about him. As they set out on their perilous journey, Viktor jubilantly declares, “Let’s go have a boring life!”

Here, again, it’s apparent why Baldry’s casting was vital. His inherent sweetness makes him impossible not to root for, impossible not to let your heart melt for. Viktor hides among the suitcases in the cargo space of Fran’s tour bus and Daniel and Viktor text to each other, terrified, as the bus crosses Spain and France.

Viktor (Maxim Baldry) hides on Fran’s tour bus as he escapes Spain. (HBO)

Meanwhile, Stephen has taken on another part-time job as a monkey for medication trials. In yet another monumental bit of change that’s brilliantly thrown away in casual dialogue, Stephen mentions that, since Britain left the EU, they have to test all medications from scratch in the UK.

When Stephen has an allergic reaction to one drug test, two technicians innocently but disastrously call both his wife Celeste and his girlfriend Elaine to come pick him up. It’s a fascinating sequence because of how Davies has structured the narrative. Stephen’s plight seems trivial in a way, sandwiched between scenes of Daniel and Viktor’s life-and-death struggle a thousand miles away. However, to Stephen, the event is earth shattering.

Celeste (T’Nia Miller) confronts her husband Stephen (Rory Kinnear) and his mistress Elaine (Rachel Logan). (HBO)

Celeste reveals the affair to the entire family over the Signor voicelink, then demands Stephen move out. Grandmother Muriel strides in and reminds everyone it’s her house… then sides with Celeste.

It’s a beautifully judged change by Davies in their relationship. There were plenty of tiny moments Davies planted in early episodes to suggest Muriel and Celeste truly loathed each other, but those moments also reinforced, each time, how strong they both are. And there were also skillfully realized key beats where they sympathized with each other, building to this.

Celeste (T’Nia Miller) discovers she has an unlikely ally in Muriel (Anne Reid). (HBO)

Faced with Stephen’s spinelessness, Muriel surprises everyone, maybe even herself, by siding with Celeste and forging a great bond with her. It’s a wonderful spark of organic feminism in the series: sisterhood across distrust, forged by flames.

Even in this moment, actress T’Nia Miller exquisitely allows tiny hints of compassion for Stephen and regret for the destruction of their marriage to flicker across her face. In the hands of a lesser actress, the character could have been merely righteously indignant here, but Miller finds countless bits of coloring and humanity in this confrontation, making Celeste’s strength in the face of her own fear even more admirable.

“What color is she?” (HBO)

As Stephen leaves, his daughter Bethany has only one question for him about his mistress, “What color is she?” “White,” replies Stephen to his biracial daughter. She turns in disgust and goes upstairs. Bethany’s tiny but crucial moment of complete repulsion toward her father is something Davies skillfully lays in here that will pay off in multiple ways in the next episode.

The triumph in the scene belongs to Davies as much as to the actors, because he succeeds in making a domestic squabble as meaningful and emotionally engaging as a harrowing flight to freedom.

Daniel and Viktor reach Calais in Fran’s tour bus, but it faces sudden inspection as they drive onto the ferry, and the men have to flee. They hole up in a seedy motel, only 22 tantalizingly short miles from the UK, unable to board a ferry without papers for Viktor. They need a faked passport and a faked breath test.

Daniel (Russell Tovey) and Viktor (Maxim Baldry) seek help in Calais. (HBO)

Without even commenting on it, this episode has cleverly integrated a new technology in multiple scenes. Breath tests have replaced fingerprints for identification. Through a man Viktor knows from the deportation center back in the UK, they find a French woman who can sell them both on the black market. However, in a heartbreaking scene, she instead cheats them out of 6,000 Euros, a huge chunk of Daniel’s life savings.

We’re used to hearing how dangerous the journey of migrants is. They rarely encounter people who want to help them. At best, they encounter people who want to make money off them in assisting them. At worst, and all too often, they meet people who just want to take advantage of them, exploiting their desperation and inability to report their victimizers to the police.

Daniel (Russell Tovey) entrusts his passport to the woman who will instead rob him. (HBO)

We’re starting to get at the core of what Davies wants to say with Years and Years. It’s becoming clear this series was never intended simply as a soap opera showing a comfortable middle-class family riding out an unfortunate right-wing government in the UK.

Instead, Davies is taking this relatable family, filled with recognizable UK stars, and putting them in situations we commonly associate with “others,” with people we allow ourselves not to feel anything for when they’re put in cages.

Davies is howling in outrage at how wrong that is by showing it happening to a handsome white TV star, and asking us, if we feel sympathy for him as we watch it unfold on TV, how can we look away from it every night on the news at our own borders?

Viktor (Maxim Baldry) and Daniel (Russell Tovey) realize they have been robbed. (HBO)

With no way for Viktor to get on the ferry, and little money left, Daniel and Viktor are reduced to contacting human traffickers, giving over the last of their cash in a terrifying gamble. They’re relieved when a minivan shows up at the designated spot, and they find themselves among African and Middle Eastern migrants heading for a better life.

Implicit in this scene is Davies’ furious questioning of us and himself. How are Daniel and Viktor’s plights any different from the others’? Why can we let ourselves care about them any more than the rest? Just because they’re attractive and white? How do we allow ourselves to stay numb to the boatloads of human beings arriving on Western shores every day?

Davies has said in interviews that when he filmed the series earlier this year, the idea of migrants trying to cross the English Channel to Britain was still fiction, though sadly that’s no longer the case.

Daniel (Russell Tobey) and Viktor (Maxim Baldry) exit the minivan at the coast. (HBO)

As the minivan arrives at the boat, Daniel optimistically notices they’re now only 20 miles from England. But then we see what will take them across the English Channel. It’s not a boat; it’s an inflatable dinghy that doesn’t look suited to crossing a pond, much less the Channel.

Then a second busload of refugees arrives, to Daniel and Viktor’s horror. As these desperate people overwhelm the small boat, Daniel overcomes his fear and helps them aboard, as a terrified Nigerian woman prays.

Director Cellan Jones stages this scene with masterful humanity and an epic scale that feels truly, wrenchingly cinematic. He conveys the ensuing crossing in a series of nightmarish flashes – images of the boat crossing the English Channel in the inky night, the terrified refugees battered by high waves.

Desperate refugees race through the surf toward the tiny boat. (HBO)

Suddenly, all is peaceful and silent. We’re on a beach on the English coast. And we’re at the moment the series has always been moving toward. Daniel’s lifeless body lies on the beach, tagged by a police officer. Viktor watches, incoherently mumbling to himself, beside the Nigerian woman.

The moment, and indeed the entire series, is Russell T Davies’s anguished, bellowed scream, carried directly to us through the medium of television. Years and Years is avowedly, unashamedly political and partisan, because we live in a world where not taking a political stand makes you complicit.

Davies has said in absolutely every interview he has given that he sat down to write the series the day after Donald Trump was elected president. His artistic intent is absolutely inseparable from his work here. Attempting to view it in any other way does it a profound injustice. This is art as a political statement, from a gifted master.

Viktor (Maxim Baldry) stares numbly at Daniel’s corpse. (HBO)

Davies willed the character of Daniel into existence so he could end up here, his dead body among the corpses of African and Middle Eastern migrants who, hours earlier, were his fellow passengers on the tiny boat. Daniel was no smarter than them, no better a man than them, no more worthy of life than them, and he is now every bit as dead as them.

How dare we have more sympathy for Daniel than for the rest of them, Davies is crying. How dare we turn our backs on those who want only the safety and security we take for granted? How dare we turn away from the dead who wash up on our own shores – a father clutching his child on the cover of every American newspaper, only weeks ago, now forgotten. How dare we blame the victims for their plight?

There is no simple solution. Davies doesn’t let us or himself off that easy, but he demands we look at it, by taking a funny, charming, handsome white leading man, and leaving him cold and dead at the gateway to the country.

As Viktor stands there, on the beach, the eternally joyful fire in his eyes is at last extinguished. The moment is devastating, a testament to the abilities of Davies to imagine it, Cellan Jones to stage it, and Baldry to bring it hauntingly to life.

“Astonishing, astonishing!” (HBO)

Viktor waits in a hospital, under the foil blankets we have become all too used to turning away from when we see them covering human beings on the news. The haunted survivors of the raft huddle beneath a TV mounted on the wall, which shows that Viv Rook has been swept to power with a massive victory in the general election. She is the new Prime Minister. “Astonishing, astonishing!” she crows.

Viktor takes the opportunity to slip past the inattentive police and board a bus for Manchester. He walks up to Daniel’s house, removing the key he kept as a token of their love. He opens the door, turns off the security system with the code he still knows, and tells Signor to call Daniel’s family.

Viktor (Maxim Baldry) calls the Lyons family to tell them Daniel is dead. (HBO)

He tells them Daniel is dead, and he’s there, alone and alive. Baldry delivers the monologue with soul-crushing, emotionally naked sincerity. Viktor has returned to the house he spent the happiest days of his life in, where he still feels at home, with the ghost of the man he loved. And all he can do now is ask, in exhausted desperation, the question that every migrant must ask of the country they flee to: “Is this home?”