![]() They’re trying to distract you from the fact that there isn’t one. Clips of actual news footage covering Neave’s murder, like all the other flashes of historical footage, aren’t really adding anything to the story. The truth is, for the first time, the G-word actually applies here. Obviously they couldn’t offer this particular defence for the use of Neave’s murder, because what storyline? Instead C4’s statement weakly pointed out that the show “ is entirely fictional,” which doesn’t sound like a justification at all – more like a formal way of saying: “You can’t sue us, fuck off”. As Channel Four rightly said in its defence of the most controversial scenes (in which several young children are massacred at a primary school), they were “ editorially justified within the context of the storyline”. The word “gratuitous” got thrown at the first series a lot for its vivid depictions of torture and mayhem, but every awful thing we saw in those episodes directly served an unfolding drama, or the growth of its characters. Having sat through the prologue, however, I’m inclined to say that the family of Mr Neave has sort of got a point. We here at Flickbook hold it to be self-evident that pushing the bounds of taste is always forgivable, if it adds something essential to a good story. Unless, I suppose, you count the depiction of politician Airey Neave’s murder as a joke? I was aware there’d been a fuss about this in the media before watching, and had pre-emptively dismissed it as the usual hysteria. In fact, I count only two: a solid gag as an Italian journalist who doesn’t realise he’s about to be murdered because his captors will only tell him so in English and Tom Burke as Carvel enthusiastically praising malaria as part of the solution, not part of the problem. Moments of the show’s distinctive black humour are decidedly few-and-far between. There is a nagging sense in this prologue that the minds making Utopia might have accidentally started taking it seriously. It had, hardwired in from the start, a keen sense of just how absurd conspiracy theories are the knowledge that they come from the same well as myths and fairy-tales, and of just how ridiculous the world we live in would be if even a handful of them somehow came true. ![]() The first series was a lot of things – including grim, perverse, violent, and genuinely pessimistic about the serious issue of human overpopulation – but it was never po-faced. The credits are practically rolling as he is dumped unceremoniously into his cell – another box ticked, let’s move on.Īnother oddity is the distinct lack of humour. In the first series, it’s also mentioned that Carvel was tortured into madness – so in the final minutes of the episode there are literally 25 seconds of half-hearted nail-pulling, after which he’s instantly transformed into a full-on psychotic mute. The next he’s a passionate, caring family-man, because in the last series Jessica remembered him fondly. One minute Carvel is a sociopath, because the last series said he experimented on his own son. The show does try to depict this mixture, but sadly not through any real characterisation – they just switch him back and forth randomly between the two extremes from one scene to the next, depending on what the series’ canon demands of him. The episode certainly does a lot less with a lot more in it’s depiction of Carvel, who was hinted at in the first series as a chilling and bewildering combination of loving father and amoral psychopath. Having proven so artfully that less is more the first time around, it’s bizarre that Kelly now felt obliged to go ahead and shovel more on anyway. So many things which were first suggested with brilliantly effective vagueness, like Petrie’s abuse, or Carvel’s genius, or the carving on poor old “Young James Fox”’s stomach (which he should really have someone look at, by the way), are now shown to us with a bluntness which can only diminish them. ![]() Rather than departing from the arresting ideas and images of his first series and breaking fresh ground, Kelly here seems to have drunk his own KoolAid, and treats them with a solemn reverence. Writer/creator Dennis Kelly wove a story so minimal it provided just the barest amount of substance for all this glorious style to hang off and, based purely on the retro-set first episode of the new series, I think less may have been more. The much-vaunted cinematography and design, with some great core performances and a haunting electronic soundtrack all conspired to make it a memorable blast of colour. ![]() Utopia was a mixed bag, but nothing in that bag was boring.
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