‘Years and Years’: Emma Thompson’s Vivienne Rook is More Than a British Donald Trump

HBO’s latest original drama, Years and Years, is a dystopian mind melter anchored by Emma Thompson’s most chilling performance to date. (Sorry, Nanny McPhee, Vivienne Rook is far more terrifying.) Viv Rook, a television personality who shoots to fame by cursing during a political panel show, represents the kind of brazen demagogues that have taken over Western democracy in recent years. Gleefully politically incorrect and not sorry about it, Rook is clearly designed by writer Russell T. Davies to be an British version of a Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen. Still Vivienne Rook is more than just that. She is both a venomous satire of outrage jockeys and a horrifying specter of nightmares yet to come.

Years and Years isn’t specifically about Vivienne Rook, though. Rather, it focuses on one middle class British family and how their personal lives unravel thanks to major world events. The Lyons family is made up of four strikingly different adult siblings: London financial advisor Stephen (Rory Kinnear), refugee housing officer Daniel (Russell Tovey), single mom Rosie (Ruth Madeley), and their brilliant, roving political activiest sister Edith (Jessica Hynes). Years and Years opens in the present day and zooms ahead five years to a time when Brexit has ruined England, Donald Trump is nuking a man-made Chinese island, and life keeps spiraling further out of control.

Years and Years is unapologetically nihilistic. Russell T. Davies applies the same keen imagination he used to dream up troubling futures for humanity in Doctor Who to 21st century life. What Davies is saying here is that characters like Rook appeal to our worst frustrations, and that by indulging in that path, we set ourselves up for even worse hardships. It’s a very obvious, liberal politics-influenced view of the world, and the show only works because of the strength of the cast’s performances. Everyone in the Lyons family is a pitch perfect, all-too-human representation of the varying POVs butting against each other, but it’s Thompson that does something almost transcendent. She sells the bejesus out of Vivienne Rook as both a over-the-top riff on Trump, and as a way too charismatic character. 

Yeah, Thompson’s character is a clear riff on Donald Trump. It’s hard not to connect the dots. After all, she’s billed as a populist outsider who manages to capture the imagination of the frustrated masses by cursing her way through politically incorrect opinions. She’s a loser who spins her way into power, appealing to nostalgia, rage, and even bigotry. She’s even projected as a sort of parallel figure in the UK, rising to prominence at the start of Trump’s presidency and coming to greater power just as he preps to step down.

Nevertheless, Thompson molds Rook from a variety of chilling sources. She’s got the bluster of our American president, but something about her style that evoked another polarizing political figure for me, Margaret Thatcher. Vivienne Rook has a lot of Thatcher’s famed “iron” will. She uses her stubborn pride to cheekily twist her own infamous gaffe into her independent party’s name, the Four Star Party, the four stars representing the asterisks that spelled a four-letter word she dropped on television. Nevertheless, Thompson lends Rook a brashly common accent to make her seem either more honest, or at least, more blunt. (Weirdly, it reminded me somewhat of Tilda Swinton’s performance in Snowpiercer, but that’s probably a reach since Swinton went full Scottish there.)

Still, none of this would matter if Thompson didn’t also make the character compelling. She simply dazzles as Rook, who seems to be stumbling upward in her political life. Her gaffe really was a gaffe, and Thompson plays it like a child discovering they have a great singing voice. There’s a weird sort of delight that comes with Rook’s hold on the public. As the fate of the Lyons clan becomes more and more dire, Rook’s unabashed confidence in herself can be seen as a sort of anchor. Even if Daniel steadfastly is turned off by what she’s saying, you can see why his family is transfixed. It’s because Thompson has the power to transfix you and that is what makes Rook so truly terrifying.

Where to watch Years and Years