UTOPIA: C4's dark drama featuring torture, conspiracies and a comic book

Love both those elements

ugh. i thought her characterization was sub-video game level. which i guess is at least consistent; the show is a bit like watching a very long cut scene from metal gear solid, except the protagonists are standard-issue BBC folx-next-door. "in the 1970s, big boss inherited the plans for a super-vaccine developed with the GRU' secret leader, who was...... MY FATHER. anyone fancy a cup of tea?"

well, it is pretty explicitly a televisual comic book

So we're back in Season 1 mode now. Expository teenage hacker was pointless and crap but otherwise it was a solid episode imo. Arby and Lee still the best characters. They need to do something with Grant. Hope that Anton = Carvel turns out to be a garden path.

Aye, it felt like a lot of running about doing nothing. After S1 turned out to be not nearly as complicated or convoluted as I assumed it was going to be, I watched this far more superficially and it sort of rattled through adding next to nothing; some of us had already assumed that Anton=Carvel so it seemed a bit early to bust that one out and young hacker was just a S1 cipher - delivers the tiniest bit of new information then dies.

The one bit of intrigue - did Dugdale call in the hit on that scientist woman, or did he just sit in his car and watch? I get that he's implicit in the conspiracy and because of his position they can't just kill him at the moment, but does he protest too much that he doesn't want to be part of it?

I assumed that Dugdale did make the call and that the Network have some leverage (his wife + Alice?) to force his cooperation.

I also wonder whether we'll learn that Milner isn't the top level of the Network after all (what was she doing when Carvel first met her?) and she falls out of favour with Higher Up when she starts to flake over Carvel still being alive. It's usually an unsatisfying move when conspiracy shows do this imo (Orphan Black did something similar at the end of S2), but we'll see.

I had assumed Dugdale's wife had just left him - she was on the verge of doing so in S1 anyway and then was used as a weapon against him when the Anya conspiracy was exposed.

Yes, the new Eastern European woman who is head of the trust already seems more/better connected than Milner. I'm wondering whether the Network actually sent her off looking for Jessica just to keep her on the sidelines ("it took me 30 years to find her"), and were maybe explicitly helping Jessica evade her until Milner got lucky at the end of S1. I think the shots of the two women on the sofa were supposed to deliberately mirror the shots of Milner's husband from the prequel descending into alcoholism/uselessness, so imo it's likely she's either heading for a breakdown or being shot. It's hard to imagine the Milner from S1 making such a basic mistake as she does this week with Ian on the phone.

Speaking of Ian, poor Ian, it always happens to him. Framed as a murderer in this series, and as a paedo in the last one. Actually, since he hasn't changed his identity how did the paedo stuff get dealt with?

I am super curious about this, but also a bit tired of high-tension TV shows in which ongoing characters are lovingly tortured or obliterated every other episode. Is it one of those? Or is it one of those, but one worth it anyway?

Or is it one of those, but one worth it anyway?

yep imo

liked eps2+3 but man i wish we were back in the 70s

I would have been happy to stay in the 70's. I didn't realise ep 3 was out there and was expecting that on monday, confusion from using t0rrent sites to watch tv programs.

I am almost certain that the new Eastern European woman character is visually styled after Genisis P Orridge.

Wasn't feeling that episode at all - everything feels a bit predictable and there's no "what the hell is going on?" feeling like in S1.

Was somewhat O_o when they broke into a TV office to get a viral cat video they couldn't access on the internet but I did like the Romanian guy. Episode was a bit of a wash overall.

yeah the rationale for the break-in was ridiculous

I get what you're saying, but the ep really advanced the plot quite a bit. Carvel uncovered (although was he always a survivor? Wasn't he too young in the 70s?), the method for delivering Janus fully exposed, Jessica on the run and Dugdale's family/complicity explained, Milner becoming sidelined and setting up her own agenda...

Oddest thing for me outside of the Ian break-in was Wilson 1) becoming a good shot and 2) not suffering from depth of field issues despite only having one eye.

Visuals department really outdid themselves in this episode. Wish the family reunion had lasted longer, but I guess the plot needed to be driven along.

Yeah, the episode looked really great.

In plot terms it all looks a bit terminal, not sure how it can be pulled back from what Milner's done - although Burger King clearly has some kind of undefined role and I suspect he'll end up being the Maguffin that prevents it. He was obviously tracking, or being told about, the 5 men in charge of the canisters and my guess is that he's a failsafe put in by someone (the woman from the charity maybe?) to recover the canisters if and when Milner carries out her plot, which is why he has currency and a passport to get him into the locations of the virus.

I assumed he was the guy that was going to release the virus?

No, that was covered last episode in dialogue with the guy in the shopping centre food court - pilots are going to release it under the cover story of crop spraying.

I'm a bit hazy on the details but wasn't food court guy one of three people who could be called up to set everything in motion? I figured that Burger King was another one of the three - the one who was actually chosen.

Don't remember the three but you could be right - that there are three options for pilots in each country. But that doesn't square with why Burger King needs passports and currency for each country; that would imply he was going to do them all himself at different times? Surely that would be too liable to failure, that he might only get to deliver one canister before something went wrong? (Although this is also true of him being a failsafe to prevent it all.)

Whole thing seems a bit lower stakes than the first one tbh (hundreds of millions of deaths notwithstanding). And too many minor irritants like "a heights thing" - just close your eyes ffs i'm trying to save your life here.

Wanna know where that ruin on the moors was though.

found it
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hebden,+Skipton,+North+Yorkshire+BD23/@54.0960259,-1.9579677,318m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x487c08344de97f31:0xdda31bad3a66c662

good find! some more on the area here: http://www.kabrna.com/cpgs/countryside/grassington_home.htm

I was wondering where that was. They also used the Hepworth House in Wakefield for the Network HQ. Hurrah for Yorkshire!

So we're back where we started from, more or less. Hopefully they'll come up with something new for S3.

Are we supposed to understand from the lovely chest-carving scene that Leah is now Mr. Rabbit, or that Wilson actually is Mr. Rabbit but without Milner's sophistication?

I suspect the latter, really.

Yeah, a total nothing ending but I suppose it fits with a "the conspiracy can't be stopped" mentality.

The old, stale electrical appliance dropped in the bath execution scene doesn't quite cut the mustard in the RCBO era, that shit won't give you 70ma through your heart in the millisecs it takes to trip out, not that I would try it at home.

I wished this series had stayed in the 70's, the first episode was the strongest imo.

otm, rest of the run didn't hit those heights

this one sort of felt like it was just shuffling chess pieces around the board

Wish they'd killed off Ian, he really is the worst character.

oh hooray, a us remake.
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/feb/13/utopia-hbo-remake-david-fincher-gillian-flynn

oh i didn't know there was a thread. binge-watched this last month and really enjoyed it - so many amazing wide-lens shots that made it seem slightly uncanny, in a sort of computer-generated future kind of way. not especially keen on the set-up for S3, it felt like it had come to a natural conclusion. wilson is no milner. agree that ian should've been killed off, his perpetually outraged sense of normalcy is incredibly wearing. becky is a wonderful character though. i wish they hadn't foisted the dumb love triangle narrative on her and jessica.

wondering what they can do with season 3 now that the 'mystery' is revealed, frankly. Season 2 was a bit boriing and rote for me, some nice moments but it lost that really insane sense of a real life comic in season 1 and never got it back.

I'm interested to see what HBO and Fincher do with this; how closely they'll hew to the storyline or will they just use the premise to do something else insane? It could be good.

i was really put off by the violence, which felt gratuitous to no purpose

no doubt fincher will be "faithful" to that aspect of it

wondering what they can do with season 3 now that the 'mystery' is revealed,

wonder no more.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/utopia-series-3-cancelled-channel-4-pulls-the-plug-to-make-way-for-new-dramas-9785228.html

Not too surprising - ratings were awful iirc and the plot wasn't going anywhere.

yeah it really fell apart in season 2. disappointing. Hope that Fincher does this better in the US. Or at least keeps it to one year.

Finally binged this. Super first series, but the writers made some huge gaffes in the second series, if they were intending a third spoilers I could never buy into Wilson Wilson's moral dilemma (which might makes emotional sense in a moral philosopher but not an uberhacker), the mystery of Mr. Rabbit should have been teased longer, and Lee (yellow-suit) and Terrence (burger sleeper) were key boogiemen worth preserving.

The soundtrack(s) by Cristobal Tapia De Veer are exceptional, best TV soundtracks since Richard Gibbs & Bear McCreary for the BSG reboot. Reminded a bit of Susumu Hirasawa's OST for Paprika

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsJXfkOlCLw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrenNlr1Wzo

The US remake of this is out this year (!), on Amazon (!!) and written by Gillian Flynn (!!!)

Can't say I love the casting for characters Michael Stearns/Dugdale, or what the new Jessica Hyde implies about how the plot will change. Would have prefered a gender swap for Ian (the IT guy) rather than Grant/Alice (the child).

As with Äkta människor/Humans, I expect to pine for a S3 of the originals.

Do you mean her age?

Do we know Grant is definitely not in it? That’s not a full cast by any means (and idk who “Thomas Christie” is meant to be either).

I’ll have a look at this but like you I’ll always want a third series.

Not to get too spoilery here, but in the original, the ethnicity of Jessica Hyde's father plays heavily into the plot. I just don't think it will work as well with a more common ancestry, or one that hasn't suffered the same degree of recent genocide.

Wild guess, Thomas Christie is Lee, but won't have the snazzy lime green suit.

Oh, and the Stearns/Dugdale casting is just too on the nose.

I forgot the girl's name in the original was Alice. Odd to announce that casting and not Grant's.

This went from Fincher/HBO to not-Fincher/Amazon. Hmmm

Not to get too spoilery here, but in the original, the ethnicity of Jessica Hyde's father plays heavily into the plot. I just don't think it will work as well with a more common ancestry, or one that hasn't suffered the same degree of recent genocide.

I know exactly what you mean but I think it makes more sense in an American context? Like the scene in s2 where Becky sends Grant out into the street to find a guy who speaks (redacted) - I’m not sure how you’d make that work in a US context. I mean it would also work if one or both her parents were Rwandan?

Not to get too spoilery here, but in the original, the ethnicity of Jessica Hyde's father plays heavily into the plot. I just don't think it will work as well with a more common ancestry, or one that hasn't suffered the same degree of recent genocide.

I know exactly what you mean but I think it makes more sense in an American context? Like the scene in s2 where Becky sends Grant out into the street to find a guy who speaks redacted - I’m not sure how you’d make that work in a US context. I mean it would also work if one or both her parents were Rwandan?

Actually thinking about it now, there’s no reason to take it at face value. Like Fiona O’Shaugnessy was Irish in the first one & that had exactly zero contribution to the plot, whereas her ethnicity, which she wasn’t even aware of? Very much so.