By Charles Olafare

Years and Years

I’m watching a show at the moment called Years and Years. It’s about the future. Or more specifically, what the future will be like if things keep going the way they are.

It’s got all the components of a piece of “ripped from the headlines” fiction. All the things that are just starting to worry us now are becoming big, tangible and terrifying problems.

There’s an out of control migration crisis, a willfully ignorant but surprisingly popular right wing politician, and nuclear annihilation all in the first episode. It’s quite heady.

Watching it gives me an anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s fiction, but it’s barely removed from reality. Everything that happens in it could happen tomorrow and hardly surprise anyone.

According to the writer Russell T Davies, that effect is entirely intentional. Although the show has already been written and filmed, he and his team will still go back to edit and rewrite sections to make them more current and true-to-life. Don’t be surprised if there’s a reference to Theresa May’s resignation in the next episode.

That level of attention to detail is the exact sort of thing we’re encouraged to apply to our own work. It’s bloody hard. The hardest bit is developing the eye for details in the first place. It’s not muscle memory. The whole process of working on something, finishing it and then coming back to check if your work is actually done just doesn’t come easy.