Have been catching up with Years and Years on iPlayer recently and one has to hope it's not too accurate a vision of our future - the below fake BBC News clip is from a scene set in 2026, where they're apparently still using the graphics and studios launched in 2013, and no Reith!
Maybe someone at the BBC saw our discussions and decided to mess with us.
On the plus side, they've evolved just enough to drop the 4:3 safe areas for the graphics.
All of these Russell T Davies shows seem to only appeal to a very limited audience and, apart from his work in Doctor Who, have very limited mainstream appeal.
Cucumber
on Channel Four was similar. If you believed the Twitterati it was a huge success whereas in reality the ratings were awful. I’m surprised he keeps getting high profile commissions when his audience is niche (North London intelligentsia and the Manchester set). All his series also seem to involve the overly dramatic death of a gay character in harrowing circumstances.
Well to be fair no-one knows how many people actually watch these Netflix/Amazon series that get talked about by "the Twitterati", they just don't get disappointing overnight ratings released to seemingly confirm it's a flop.
Years and Years is a brilliant series, IMO. It's chilling to see something set so near yet so far in the future, particularly with some of the storylines involved.
But for me, it's been put on the wrong channel - it's far more suited to BBC Two. This kind of thing has happened a bit too much in the past year as well. Both Press and even Wanderlust were both put on BBC One wrongly... and funnily enough, both of them performed badly, with about 2 million viewers.
It's sad to say, but it seems ANYTHING unrelated to the thriller genre (murder, police, corruption) at the moment doesn't do very well. There's exception, of course, to Gentleman Jack, but even that's tumbled quite a bit from it's very first episode.
Blame lies here with whoever's in charge of commissioning for a specific channel - is that still Charlotte Moore? The examples above (Press, Wanderlust, Years and Years) will all probably be axed now, when if they'd have performed with the same numbers on BBC Two, they'd have a shot of a second series.
All of these Russell T Davies shows seem to only appeal to a very limited audience and, apart from his work in Doctor Who, have very limited mainstream appeal.
Cucumber
on Channel Four was similar. If you believed the Twitterati it was a huge success whereas in reality the ratings were awful. I’m surprised he keeps getting high profile commissions when his audience is niche (North London intelligentsia and the Manchester set). All his series also seem to involve the overly dramatic death of a gay character in harrowing circumstances.
Well to be fair no-one knows how many people actually watch these Netflix/Amazon series that get talked about by "the Twitterati", they just don't get disappointing overnight ratings released to seemingly confirm it's a flop.
Well to be fair I never mentioned Netflix/Amazon dramas. I was talking about RTD's track record at delivering low ratings.
I wasn't saying you did - didn't phrase myself well.
The point I was inelegantly making was that it's all well and good painting RTD's output as a flop despite being talked about amongst the chattering classes, but there are masses of other drama that gets the same treatment but never gets the punchline "well that didn't do very well" as we simply don't know. It's a genius part of the SVOD PR model that BBC1/ITV etc can't get away with as they will get the ratings published the day after.
Also worth saying (although I haven’t seen any Years & Years yet, I’m waiting to binge watch it once life calms down) that RTD has planned this for years. It’s mentioned in the Writer’s Tale (published in 2010) that it's his favourite idea and he’s been sitting on it for years.
It’s not some new reaction to current events, although it chillingly fits into that, it’s something that has been inside his head for sometime.
Well to be fair I never mentioned Netflix/Amazon dramas. I was talking about RTD's track record at delivering low ratings.
But as you mention, that's "apart from Doctor Who", but that was an absolute phenomenon at the time, in terms of its cultural impact probably the most successful drama of the last twenty years. Certainly it seemed a bit of a risk at the time, given it had been away for so long, but during his reign it was a huge hit. And of course last year he had a big hit with A Very English Scandal.
You can say RTD gets rubbish ratings "apart from Doctor Who" but that was an absolute smash hit that has inevitably overshadowed much of his other work. He could have stayed doing late night stuff like Queer as Folk but he's worked in the mainstream and it's obvious bold pieces like Cucumber, which was massively sexually explicit, and Years And Years, which is terrifying, are going to be an acquired taste. He could have stayed on Who for longer and lived off that, but he didn't.
It's like saying Harry Hill hasn't had mainstream success "apart from TV Burp" when that was a massively successful series. You may as well argue Paul McCartney hasn't done much apart from being in The Beatles.
You can say RTD gets rubbish ratings "apart from Doctor Who"
I think
The Second Coming
(also starring Christopher Eccleston as a mysterious being with magical powers...) did quite well, didn't it? And that despite not being ITV's usual fare at all.
Casanova
's (starring David Tennant, there's a theme developing) first episode drew a record audience for BBC Three at the time.
But for me, it's been put on the wrong channel - it's far more suited to BBC Two.
I’d say it would have worked best on Channel 4
The BBC One drama viewer tends to be older and conservative, probably with a small and big ‘c’ so I can see why they may have been put off.
Also everyone is more than fed up with current politics without a story inventing new ones that are far too close to the truth. It may have worked better 5-10 years ago.
