Utopia, Channel 4, Tuesdays @ 10pm
Written and created by Dennis Kelly
Starring: Alexandra Roach, Adeel Akhtar, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Oliver Woollford, Fiona O’Shaughnessy
Where is Jessica Hyde?
We’re into week 3 of Utopia and I WANT THAT MANUSCRIPT.
Penned by relatively unknown Dennis Kelly and made up of a cast of not so recognisables, this new dark thriller by Channel Four keeps the audience in just as much suspense as its protagonists and is looking to be a surprise success this year. However, the lack of star involvement seems entirely appropriate. The storyline is wrapped in intense mystery around five strangers brought together by mysterious graphic novel author whose original piece ‘Utopia’ has apparently predicted the major disasters of the last hundred years. Let’s just hope Dennis Kelly hasn’t got similar psychic abilities, or our future’s looking rather dark indeed!
In the opening scene, we saw the hazardous yellow, plastered across everything Utopia-related, splattered with blood by two oddly dressed men in a comic store. Three episodes along, we know about as much about what’s really going on as we did then. You get a very real sense that we are being taken on a journey that we might well regret getting involved in.
Set in the very near future where our every movement is monitored by CCTV, our online habits are tracked and our medical records are available to various organisations, we are in a world that is still very much our own. When the group of strangers meet to discuss finding the sought-after sequel to the mysterious graphic novel, all hell breaks loose and the terrifying organisation ‘the Network’ descends upon their extremely visible lives.
Breathing new life into the worn down “you mess with the system, the system messes with you” mold, the threats we face in the series are extremely tangible. While it’s all a little conspiracy laden, Utopia embodies the very contemporary risks of the power of knowledge.
As the characters discover how frightfully easily their actions can be tracked and predicted through simple employment of modern technology, the audience too can sleep less soundly. A quick online search of Utopia will quickly lead you to Channel 4’s intriguing accompanying site that will confirm these fears, highlighting a number of ways in which our information is stored. We may not be ignorant of loyalty card schemes to track our buying habits or targeted advertising or mass databases, but Utopia is one of the first mediums to fully explore their potentially sinister uses that doesn’t involve a group of shouty protestors going ignored in the high street.
However, this is not a series about the dangers of the internet. Scenes of (literally) eye watering violence, a bit of black comedy and blinding saturated colour drag us in from contemplation and leave us, minds spinning, in a world where all that’s normal, for those involved at least, has fallen apart. We can only run with the characters and speculate as to what could be happening.
One of the most frustrating things about a plot so steeped in mystery is our inability to form any relationship with the main characters. Encouraged to trust no one, we have very little clue as to who we are supposed to relate to. Everyone is suspicious, from the cold, distrusting Jessica (Fiona O’Shaughnessy), to, dare I say it, baby faced 11 year old, Grant (spectacularly cast Oliver Woollford).
At the end of each episode, we are left desperate for more: we want to know more about the characters, what’s in the manuscript and the purpose of the network, as well as where on Earth we’re being taken next! Whether the series does become a contemporary cult classic depends entirely on how we find out the answers – the potential for Utopia to become a Lost-style epic that loses half its audience by become too taxing is not out of sight.
Utopia is not a comfortable watch, but if you want something to get you thinking, to speculate with friends about and to get your heart pumping, this really is a must see. We can only hope that all the unease is paid off as the story unfolds.
Gemma Joyce
exeposedev 