YMMV / Years and Years

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Alkaline hydrolysis is an existing technology, as an example, one has been used since at least 2005 by the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, USA. Planning permission was obtained for one in the UK in 2017, but the water utility refused because of the lack of industry standards for dealing with the flow of inorganic human remains into the sewers.
• Awesome Music: Murray Gold wrote the score for the series and it does not disappoint.
  • The appropriately-named "The Bomb", which plays during the nuclear attack scene at the end of episode 1, with overlapping rapid drumbeats, synthesisers and Ominous Latin Chanting very clearly giving the impression of total chaos. The end credits theme is somewhat of an extension of it.
  • "Into The Future", the piece that plays over the montages in each episode is incredible. A haunting choir and an intense orchestra get across just how the world is becoming more and more chaotic.
  • "The Beach", the heart-breaking piece that plays when Daniel's body is found on the beach and the aftermath is quiet and beautiful and hammers home the devastation of that scene.
• Complete Monster: Clive "Woody" Woodward is Stephen Lyons' "old school friend", who the latter turns to out of desperation to escape his soul-crushing job as a bicycle courier. Woody agrees to find work for Stephen, and proves to be far worse than a mere jerk when he delights in winning a government contract for maintaining two of Vivienne Rook's "Erstwhile Sites"—concentration camps—for housing refugees and illegal immigrants. Woody knows that this makes him complicit in the torment and death of hundreds if not thousands of innocent people, but simply doesn't care, even admitting that he plans not to do any "maintenance" whatsoever, pocketing the cash while leaving the camps' residents to rot in squalid conditions.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • During the first Time-Passes Montage, it's mentioned that, in 2022, Russia (now named the Soviet Union once again) sent its military forces to annex Ukraine, sparking off the refugee crisis which caused Viktor to flee to Britain. In 2022, in Real Life, Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, causing a refugee crisis, and declared it was annexing several regions of the country on 30 September. Though it's something of an understatement to say that Russia's plans haven't exactly gone smoothly, with them not being in full control of any of said regions.
  • In episode four, a news report informs that the US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade and that equal marriage has been suspended. Cue three years after the show ended, and an initial draft majority opinion that was leaked in May 2022 indicates that the US Supreme Court is not only ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, but also Planned Parenthood v. Casey as well. They formally abolished Roe V. Wade two months later, creating further fear and uncertainty over the status of liberal reforms under the Republican-Dominated Supreme Court.
  • The timing of Queen Elizabeth's death was definitely close enough (implied to be at some time in 2022; the year she actually died).
  • Given the dramatic escalation of the Arab–Israeli Conflict in 2023, leaving thousands dead, Vivienne Rook's statement that she "Doesn't give a fuck" about the conflict would be even more incendiary than it was in 2019.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In October 2022, then-Prime Minister Liz Truss delivered her speech to the Conservative Party Conference... Wearing a dress functionally identical to one worn by Vivienne Rook - during the scene where she establishes concentration camps. Russell T. Davies himself commented on the incident.
  • In the series, Donald Trump is re-elected to a second term; not only that, the Republicans are implied to have won four consecutive presidential elections (meaning they would have held the White House between 2017 and 2033). What actually happened was that Trump was voted out after one term (which, needless to say, pissed him off big time) and Mike Pence's presidential ambitions were pretty much torpedoed in the aftermath as well.
  • It's safe to say at this point that the way the invasion of Ukraine happened in the show compared to OTL was vastly different as well. In the series' timeline, it's heavily implied that Ukraine was swiftly conquered with virtually no issue. In reality however, the invasion quickly stalled with Russia only making slight gains, and within a year it became obvious that the whole thing was an embarrassing backfire on Russia's part.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • In episode five, Stephen gets a job working for new concentration camps set up in the UK. To make matters worse, after blaming Viktor for Daniel's death, Stephen arranges for him to be sent to one of the camps.
  • Ralph decides to get Viktor deported by revealing to the authorities he's working in a petrol station when it's illegal for asylum seekers to do so, just because he was hurt by Danny cheating on him, thus being responsible for the events that caused Danny's death and so much grief for him family two episodes later.

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