Years and Years - TV's not-so-bright vision of the future

The Lyons family witnesses the arrival of dire new political force Viv Rook (played by Emma Thompson) in the drama Years and Years.

Years And Years (SoHo, 8.30pm Mondays)

Television used to make the future look so cool. From the flying cars of The Jetsons and fax machine tutorials on Beyond 2000 to the hot robots on Humans, you'd watch these future-set shows and think, "Wow, looks awesome, can't wait."

Now the tide has turned. Blame it on Black Mirror, blame it on the bleak and perilous state of the actual world right now but the future according to TV shows these days absolutely sucks. What makes the future envisioned by new SoHo series Years And Years so stark and terrifying is how closely it's connected to the current reality.

The whole thing starts in a very real and recognisable 2019, where a radio news bulletin reports the death of Doris Day (who died in real life on May 13, the same day the series premiered in the UK).

The great leap forward to 2024 happens early in episode one, right after the Lyons family has witnessed the arrival of dire new political force Viv Rook (Emma Thompson, whose character brief is basically "what if Katie Hopkins ran for Parliament?") on Question Time.

Days later, as the extended family welcomes the arrival of a new baby, one uncle suffers a kind of minor existential breakdown in the delivery room. "If it's this bad now," he hyperventilates, "what's it going to be like for you?"

Cue a rollicking montage of big family events interrupted by snatches of news reports. Where will you be, what will you be doing the moment you learn the Queen has died? How will you feel the day Donald Trump wins a second term in office? Be honest: if military tensions slowly escalate between China and the US during the next five years, will you even bother to pay attention?

This is the most relatable thing about the Lyons family, how indifferent most of them are to this type of major world news. It's too far away, too difficult to get their heads around. They prefer to just ignore it – until the day it suddenly, terrifyingly, affects them directly and sends Gran's birthday into absolute chaos.

Years And Years' imagined 2024 is quite bad geopolitically but it's arguably even worse socially. One family member goes on a date with a bloke who owns a robot and encounters the ultimate 2024 deal-breaker when she finds out he's been having sex with it. At least the robot the dad shagged in Humans was hot; this one looks like Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man.

Robot sex and digital masks that let kids walk around with Snapchat filters on their actual faces all day could happen but at this point they seem less likely for the next five years than a Trump-inspired global crisis or an insanely racist businesswoman becoming Prime Minister of the UK.

It's this sense of realism that sets Years And Years apart. Its vision of the future may be quite grim and pessimistic but it's not without heart or hope. I already can't wait to rewatch it in 2024.