It’s always a bummer when a show we really love gets canceled. It is perhaps even more upsetting when it’s a show that could have changed the entire way we look at television that gets the ax. In 2013, British network Channel 4 seemed to have hit the jackpot with a little series called Utopia. Well, artistically speaking, that is. Utopia never quite got the recognition it deserved from audiences, and ended up getting chopped down in 2014 after its second season. All it takes is a second looking at the show’s striking visuals to realize that this was a mistake. Utopia is nothing short of a tour de force, not only for how its crew conceives its images, but also for how showrunner Dennis Kelly builds the suspense that makes the series tick, revealing the basics right away while still keeping us at the edge of our seats. But, sadly, numbers speak: despite its loyal fanbase, the show didn’t garner enough viewers to keep on going. Regardless, more than ten years after its release, it still deserves to be celebrated.
Utopia also has a very complicated legacy, and Kelly has even told NME that he wouldn’t have written the show today. Based on a number of conspiracy theories surrounding biological warfare and vaccines, the series follows a group of comic book enthusiasts who are brought together after stumbling upon a volume that might reveal a nefarious plan for humanity. The impact of the story is undeniable as it plays with our most basic fears and instincts when it comes to science we don’t quite understand. But in a post-COVID world, where harmful conspiracy theories and vaccine misinformation run rampant, the show loses a
little bit of its charm. Alas, it was never Kelly’s job to predict the future, and how we’ve transformed once-eerie stories into something more is the kind of evolution most television aficionados could only dream of.
The Conspiracy Theories Are Actually Real in ‘Utopia’
The basic premise of the show follows a bored IT guy Ian (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), aspiring academic Becky (Alexandra Roach), conspiracy monger Wilson Wilson (Adeel Akhtar, and yes, that’s his character’s name), and neglected 11-year-old Grant (Oliver Woollford) who are all fans of an obscure graphic novel titled The Utopia Experiments. Written by a certain Mark Dane, a former scientist later diagnosed with schizophrenia, the comic book speaks of a world plagued by famine and disease in which conspiracies are everywhere — a world very similar to the one in which the show takes place. After a fellow member of an online Utopia Experiments forum comes forth with a second volume to the story, Ian, Becky, Wilson Wilson, and Grant are all forced to disappear or else they’ll fall prey to a mysterious supra-governmental agency that has terrifying plans for the planet.
In parallel with Becky, Ian, Wilson Wilson, and Grant’s story is that of a civil servant named Michael Dugdale (Paul Higgins). A member of the Department of Health, Dugdale is being blackmailed into getting the minister to buy an iffy vaccine for a fictional disease that has been spreading like wildfire, the Russian flu. All of these characters are constantly under threat from a pair of torturers/killers, Arby (Neil Maskell) and Lee (Paul Ready), who are after the second volume of The Utopia Experiments and a woman called Jessica Hyde (Fiona O’Shaughnessy).
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The first season of Utopia has the tough job of bringing all of these characters together, and it does so with ease, weaving a web of lies and intrigue that keeps us glued to the screen. To top it all off, the show also has some of the most impressive visuals in recent television history. Its opening scenes deliver the most stunning depictions of violence, with its comic book colors and its derelict landscapes made even more impressive by the soundtrack crafted by Cristobal Tapia De Veer. The show is certainly not for the faint of heart, but if you can stand some pretty graphic depictions of torture and violence, you’re good to go.
The performances in Utopia are similarly enthralling. Maskell and Ready’s Arby and Lee are particularly captivating in how terrifying they can be, and they make sure the words “Where is Jessica Hyde?” will never again leave your brain. Akhtar’s Wilson Wilson is also an extremely charming character, and there is also something to be said about O’Shaughnessy’s Jessica Hyde, a cold-hearted tough cookie who has been fighting for her own survival ever since she was four. While her arc with Becky and Ian could use a little updating, she is still the tour de force this kind of story needs.
‘Utopia’s Season 2 Run Ends on a Cliffhanger
The first season of Utopia is a neatly wrapped piece of candy. Its conclusion, while open, can very much be understood as an ending for the entire story. The same cannot be said for Utopia Season 2, which, despite being the weakest of the pair, is still very much worth a watch. In the show’s second season, the author of The Utopia Experiments enters the game, played by none other than Emperor Palpatine himself, Ian McDiarmid. And if Season 1 has our protagonists as merely pawns in a game that is way too big for any individual person to understand, let alone stop, Season 2 makes them into more conventional heroes. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but Dennis Kelly never got to finish this second story, leaving fans with an unfinished puzzle and unanswered questions.
Utopia got a new shot at telling its story in 2020. David Fincher and Gillian Flynn teamed up for a U.S. remake of the series, starring John Cusack and Sasha Lane. The show, which is available to stream on Prime Video, barely registered with viewers. The remake has a 50% score on Rotten Tomatoes against the original Utopia‘s 100% and it got canned after its first season. Besides quality issues, one has to admit that 2020 is not 2013, and as we mentioned earlier in this piece, a story about conspiracies involving fake diseases and vaccines doesn’t hit the same way in our post-pandemic world. Still, the original Utopia holds up pretty well. All you have to do is put your 2010s goggles on and enjoy the show. Have we mentioned the amazing visuals?
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