Years & Years

[unique1986]

Starts tonight 9pm
Family drama that flashes forward into the future.

I feel sympathetic towards Celeste.

She has married into a family where her husband is unusually close to his siblings. They are all extrovert and effusive in sharing their emotions, whereas she is more self-contained.

Due to her husband's poor financial decisions, she faced a dramatic reduction in circumstances and was forced to move in with his grandmother, who doesn't like her. Bear in mind that she is working from home, and the (retired) grandmother is there ALL the time.

Her husband then embarked on a year-long affair, but she was unable to leave him as there was nowhere for her to go, and she needed to keep a roof over her daughters' heads. She kept quiet about his infidelity to protect her daughters' relationship with their dad.

She also had a scare over her daughter attempting to get illegal, dangerous and life-altering surgery.

To then find out that her husband had asked for the OW to be contacted as next of kin when he became unwell must have felt like the last straw. I don't think I would have been polite either.

Being a rather curmudgeonly person with a MIL who irritates the hell out of me, I can sort of relate to Celeste. The character that really irritates me is Rosie. The actress is very good but the character is so self-obsessed it's really irritating. She reminds me of someone I know IRL who's always wittering on in a really OTT way about things to do with her and not really paying much attention to anyone else.

Glad I'm not the only one who finds Rosie annoying. I think she'll soon come to regret voting for Viv's party.

Wow. What an amazing story, and the acting is fantastic. Love it.

I’ve just watched last night’s episodes with daughters, we all sobbed. I literally couldn’t watch the scene in the boat, it was too upsetting and was dreading who was going to be on the beach.
Every week I watch I find it honestly terrifying as it seems we are only one step away from this as our reality.
I will miss Danny. 😢

I found last night's episode utterly devastating, too. The only way I can cope with the situation for refugees is to try in a very small way to help. I only contribute £10 a month to Asylum Link. I know it isn't much but if we all did one little thing it would add up. Could I ask if anyone else who is feeling so devastated by the last episode would be willing to set up a small standing order to an organisation that helps refugees or something? I know others do much, much more but this is what I can manage myself right now.

it seems we are only one step away from this as our reality

Very well put Janus. That's it exactly.

@Catslovepies Asylum link are a fantastic charity, there are other very good ones if anyone else is interested. CRIBS provides care for women and babies who are making long journeys to travel to countries to gain asylum. There is also the UK gay and lesbian immigration group who support lgbt asylum seekers and they have supported Ken Macharia who could be detained today for deportation and sent to Kenya which criminalises being gay.

chng.it/NXbWtB6hDc

I have taught asylum seekers and refugees English for years and there is nothing like hearing snippets about their lives and how they left their countries to put my life into perspective.

I found this really hard to watch and I did cry which I rarely do these days.

Really enjoying this series, love dystopian stuff and this is so close to the bone it is quite uncomfortable.

"Due to her husband's poor financial decisions,"

Is that fair? The bank went down, not really his fault.

He transferred all the money into one account. That turned out to be Not Very Sensible.

Is it Asylum Link Merseyside that’s the charity
you support catslovepies?
To be fair, we don’t have that much savings (!) but I bet we’d keep all ours in one bank, it’s just one of those things you do unless you get wind that the banks are going to crash. But did we see it coming in 2008 (think it was)? I don’t think people had an idea it was coming to stop people frantically transferring their money and banks crashing. It was only when it was public that people queued around the block and tried to get their money out, the day before no one had a clue.

A certain amount of money is protected if banks go under, I can't remember how much it is, it's far more than we have in savings. If you have over that amount you need to spread your savings. We do anyway, just in case a bank goes down.

£85k is protected in UK banks, it was what they said on the programme. I think investments are treated differently.

That's £85k per person per bank. If he'd spread it across different accounts they would have had more left

It would have required a lot of bank accounts! Especially as I think it's across banking groups?

Oh yes sorry they would definitely have lost some of it! Maybe not all of it though. Very bad luck but then it wouldn't have been much of a plot otherwise.

It would have been a rubbish plot!

We caught up on this week's episode last night and both just sat there with our mouths hanging open at Dan on the beach. Devastating and all too real and close to the bone.

I think it was over a million they lost wasn't it? They temporarily had that much because their house sale had gone through but not their house purchase. So I guess they'd have needed at least a dozen bank accounts

Yes that's the one, Janus!

www.asylumlink.org.uk/

I’ve just given as they have a justgiving page. To anyone else who was so moved - you can donate as little as £10.
I don’t know why but I just can’t stop thinking about this, that people do this, in the dark, with children nearly every day.

It’s been a long time since I watched a drama that stayed with me the next day. Stunningly powerful.
I think the siblings will decide that V should take on D’s identity and apply for a new passport in his name. It will end with V becoming a housing officer helping refugees.

I like Celeste. I think her character is someone who has married into an extremely close knit family and not having grown up in that environment herself, she finds it a bit too much and a bit stifling. Her husband can’t empathise because that’s all he’s ever known so it seems normal to him.

I also found it interesting when Bethany asks about Elaine’s skin colour. Stephen looks at his daughter in a confused way and answers that she’s white. I think this made a very subtle point that whilst skin colour clearly isn’t anything he thinks about or considers, to his daughter, the colour of her skin is inherent to her identity and she feels he’s somehow made the choice of a white woman over a black woman. Part of this will be her age but partly, I think it’s an interesting POV which highlights that decent, non racist white people see equality=being colour blind whereas some young black people may view ‘colour blindness’ as ignoring the fact that they’re black.

I should quantify that by saying I teach middle school and part of my remit is PSE. It’s something that’s come up a few times in discussion.

But Viktor couldn't take on the persona of Daniel, as the passport office will have a photo of Daniel on record.