★★★★★
Five Stars
I must admit, I’m not the biggest fan of British TV drama. We make very good literary adaptations, detective series and dress-porn, but we have very little to rival the heavyweight American trinity of The Sopranos, The Wire and Mad Men. A lot of this is not really anybody’s fault. Britain will never be able to compete with America budget-wise and series run for only six episodes, giving less space for story development and magnifying imperfections. The need to keep the taxpayer (who partially subsidises not only the BBC but also Channel 4) happy probably also serves to limit the sense of creative freedom — a problem American cable series don’t face.
This makes the achievement of the series I’m reviewing all the more impressive. A series clearly driven on every level by a strong creative vision that knows exactly how to utilise its medium — a shining beacon of what can be achieved in British TV called, appropriately enough, Utopia. A blend of, among other things, conspiracy thriller, David Lynch movie and moral thought experiment; it manages to seem original and unique in style and content while remaining rigorously well thought out and put together. In fact it’s so good that HBO now want to make an American remake with David Fincher at the helm.
But what exactly is Utopia? Let me give you a brief synopsis — the series’motivating tensions are very real problems that overpopulation will wreak upon our planet and civilisation in the relatively near future. The series conceit is that in the 70s a scientist manufactured a protein which when injected, say as a fake vaccine, would make people completely infertile, bar a random 7 to 8% of the population who would be immune. The scientist later went mad, hiding away all information on how to manufacture the protein and scrawling cryptic drawings related to his experiments, which were later collected in a shady underground comic book. The first series revolved around the protagonists, ordinary, racially-diverse, awkwardly-British people brought together by their interest in the comic book, becoming embroiled in the machinations of the sinister ‘Network’ which aimed to discover the make up of the protein so it could release it in the fake Russian flu vaccine.
The current series kicked off with a flashback episode (shot on cool 70s era 4:3 celluloid) focusing on the scientist, Philip Carvel. This sounds, of course, a lot like somebody’s conspiracy theory — and the jump into pulpy fantasy may come off as unsophisticated to some people — but it allows the creation of an incredibly engaging series that takes you to places unimaginable in a realist narrative. That the ‘villains’ in the story really do have a point elevates the moral complexity of the series, injecting difficult questions into what could easily have been a simplistic thrill-ride. If the Network’s methods — a host of bizarre Lynchian assassins, including chocolate-raisin loving, dentist’s-gas wielding psychopath Arby (Neil Maskell) — are uncondonable, it’s clear they have a point. In fact, by the current series, one of the protagonists, the bizarrely named Wilson Wilson (Adeel Akhtar), has defected to their side- despite having been tortured (with a spoon) at their hands.
Speaking of which the series has drawn a fair amount of criticism for its eye-watering levels of violence. This will, I’m sure, be a turnoff for many. For what it’s worth, the world depicted is so surreal and the violence so stylised, it never feels aversive — at least not to my post-modern, desensitised sensibilities. There’s something deliciously subversive feeling about watching such a high quality series that does not seem to care about being deemed unacceptable by any established arbiters of culture; it’s hard to imagine the forty-something attendees of a stereotypical Islington dinner party waxing lyrical about Utopia the way they would Mad Men.
In this, and many other ways, the series seems closer to graphic novels like Watchmen than any TV series. It shares with Watchmen the ‘rag-tag group of misfits drawn into conflict with shadowy organisation who actually, hang on, maybe have a point after all’ plot and a love of a specific colour I’m going to call ‘Selfridges Yellow’ (which appears everywhere from the title screen to a bag Arby carries around everywhere). Indeed, Utopia feels closer to the feel of that graphic novel than the 2009 film adaptation ever did.
But it’s also a series which plots its own path. Despite all the dark themes and disturbing goings-on, the series still manages to be very funny, always prepared to point out the absurdity of what’s going on or allow for some classic awkward-British-people comedy. Becky (Alexandra Roach) and Ian (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) are normal, not very well coordinated people caught up in a mind bending and absurd conspiracy, and the actors mine this seam for all its comedic potential. It’s to their credit (as well as, Dennis Kelly — series creator and writer) that they always convincingly act as a normal person would in their situation, never falling into the po-faced heroics often found in American fantasy series like Heroes or Lost.
If this weren’t achievement enough, each character also elicits a lot of pathos from the viewer. You are acutely aware of the emotional consequences of the series events, and these are tactfully depicted, never becoming melodramatic. Particularly affecting is Fiona O’Shaughnessy’s portrayal of Jessica Hyde, the slightly Aspergers daughter of Philip Cavell and a woman whose entire life has been spent on the run from the network. Beginning this series in the Network’s maximum-security prison complex, where they are trying to extract Cavell’s secrets from her by any means necessary, she brings to the role a sense of the tragic emptiness of a life lived outside the norms of society.
On almost every level, Utopia is an exquisitely crafted and engaging piece of drama. It’s the shining example of what can be achieved in British TV, and raises the bar for future productions.
