Utopia

[RottingCorpse]

They've pulled no punches. After episode 2 (the first present day episode) I had my doubts, but it's swinging around nicely. That there's only two more episodes is sort of depressing as I feel like they've just gotten warmed up.

[nacho]

Oh, god, no. Two more episodes is perfect! You can't continue this plot into a lengthier format! Because now Milner is in Stephen Rea's position and will be on the run/killed, Arby and/or Wilson and Lee will bond together when one or the other  realize the truth behind Janus and decide to stop it (and Carville gave Becky the instructions on how to stop it), the Money Woman will pull the trigger while our fractured group race to stop the deployment of the flu bombs, and -- cliffhanger!

[nacho]

The Daily Mail's hateful review could be used to win new viewers over!

The obvious response is to ignore Utopia (C4), the malicious and obscene conspiracy drama that claims a Gestapo-style security service was running Britain in the Seventies and Eighties. As television, it is beneath contempt.
But what it reveals about its young audience is far more frightening than any of the hackneyed, incoherent storylines that its writer Dennis Kelly could devise.
The first series of Utopia last year won fans among viewers who must be abjectly ignorant about every aspect of modern history — the kind of people who think Barack Obama is Britain’s president.
According to Kelly’s script, Margaret Thatcher’s government was put in power by deranged MI5 agents with swastikas carved into their stomachs, while IRA terrorism was a front that let British spies assassinate anyone who tried to oppose their scheme for mass eugenics — a drug that would wipe out 90 per cent of humanity and leave a single master-race in possession of the Earth.
Kelly knows his plot is third-rate comic-book drivel. That’s why he attempts to dignify it with a historical setting.
His audience wouldn’t know or care if all the background was fiction and sci-fi. But Kelly insisted on weaving in news footage, such as the discovery of kidnapped Italian politician Aldo Moro’s corpse, stuffed into the boot of a car. That’s a meaningless reference, given the depth of his viewers’ ignorance. They probably think Aldo Moro was a second-rate supermarket.

To highlight these historical nuggets, some truly dire dialogue was supplied. The lines landed like lumps of breezeblock: ‘As you know, there’s a vote of no confidence in Mr Callaghan and his government, this Friday in fact. If we win, Margaret will become Prime Minister. Hooray.’
Another character stood in a warehouse stacked with unburied coffins, during the 1978/79 strikes, and announced: ‘They’re calling it the Winter of Discontent’ — as though his colleagues were aliens beamed down from a distant constellation.
Some of the actors deserved all the crass lines they got. Rose Leslie, who played an outlaw archer in Game Of Thrones and MI5’s psychopath-in-chief in Utopia, has called it a ‘history lesson’ filled with ‘brilliant political intrigue’.
Rose’s arrow-happy character in GoT had a catchphrase: ‘You know nothing!’ Very apt.
In the end, the abysmal storylines can be shrugged off. So what if the hero (Tom Burke from The Musketeers), ended up having his fingernails pulled out by the secret service’s pet torturer, in a nuclear power station? No one forces us to watch such tosh.
Kelly’s insults that defame real people are far worse. The family of war hero Airey Neave denounced the programme at the weekend for portraying him — very wrongly — as a boozy political fixer. This man, who escaped from Nazi prison camp Colditz, deserves a statue, not smears.
More worrying still is the depth of wilful ignorance that Utopia exposes in its young audience. Anyone who watched this dross and was taken in by it should be ashamed of themselves.

[RottingCorpse]

Obviously written by a Tory.

[nacho]

So let's talk about use of color! Red in the first episode for the title, and Milner, which is now replaced by Money Woman wearing all red.

Yellow = good? Green = bad? Also notice Lee's heterochroma, matched with his clothes. Interesting touch. Since we're being asked so heavy-handedly to pay attention to this genetic defect of his, it has me thinking all sorts of Carville tie-ins...

Oh! And Dugdale's dark/sickly blue filter....

[RottingCorpse]

You should be in film school.

I like the different field we've opened each episode with. (Save the first.) This Sam Donovan who took over Episode 4 after Mark Munden's three episodes seems to stick with Munden's aesthetic a bit more than the other guys (whose names elude me) who did the last there episodes of Series 1. I need to rematch for technique, but I've been struck by the color as well. Milner has become more muted.

If Yellow equals good then why is Lee wearing it? That guy is far from good.

Dugdale's shifting backgrounds are interesting. They started yellow and have gotten darker. I really wonder what's going to become of him.

[nacho]

I think Lee will save us all. Or, rather, almost...before Wilson kills him.

[nacho]

Okay... Episode 5 was the "slow down" episode, and all a touch too convenient. Not entirely happy with it...but, of course, it's still ten times better than anything else on TV. And we sort of needed a slow down episode because episode 4 was emotionally exhausting and gave me nightmares.

[RottingCorpse]

This is all before the final episode freakout, I presume. (Haven't watched s2e5 yet.)

[nacho]

This is all before the final episode freakout, I presume. (Haven't watched s2e5 yet.)

Oh, god. Final episode Tuesday. We spent three hours last night talking about it... And 17 emails so far today. We are100% clueless now.

[RottingCorpse]

Slow down episode? That ending was Shakespearean in its character housecleaning.


The "Gods atop Mount Olympus" imagery was awesome.

How will it end?!?!

[nacho]

Slow down episode? That ending was Shakespearean in its character housecleaning.


The "Gods atop Mount Olympus" imagery was awesome.

How will it end?!?!

Okay, okay... I guess episode four was just so intense that five almost seemed...clean. Like coming into the office after they cleaned up the gallons of blood and going back to work!

The Shakespearean aspect was a bit clumsy though, yes? A dead zone where they can still trace phones? All of the main characters showing up at the same place even though they're at different start points and that's kind of far away and half of the people converging on the place are wanted by, you know, the entire planet.

Also, in terms of homogeneous groups, the Roma aren't the best pick.  That whole subplot seems kind of lame (especially considering the first episode hung a lampshade on the idea anyway -- there's no such thing as "race.") They would have done better to single out some BS sci-fi genome and technobabbled through it instead of the heavy handed "Carville becomes as bad as the Nazis because he picked a race." But calling "race" genetic when you've already agreed in-story with the real world science that race is not genetic is really weird.

Still the best show on TV, though... No idea how the finale will shape up. The Network has crumbled, there's no way to reverse the command... So a cat and mouse race to stop the bombs, presuming Carville knows their location. Except he can't, so...

I'd say the only way to end would be with something dismal and apocalyptic, but Kelley says to plan on a season three...

[nacho]

Working very hard to avoid spoilers...but, apparently, the finale was the best thing ever and has left everyone screaming for a third season.

We'll probably hit it tonight... Though a part of me wants to avoid watching this show at night.

[nacho]

Utopia finale at eight! Followed by the Doctor Who premiere...or...suicide...

[RottingCorpse]

Missus RC watched the finale last night. I was drunk and fell asleep about five minutes again. Plan on watching it before I see you tomorrow.