After the mundane, twist free zone that was Secret State Channel 4 has gone straight back into the conspiracy thriller business with Utopia. The title refers to a mysterious, cult graphic novel, which from what I could see of it lookedunreadable, and the secrets it may hold. A motley crew of five on line forum type, obsessive fans of Utopia get themselves mixed up with a mad and extremely nasty secret organisation out to retrieve the unpublished second part of the graphic novel. That was, more or less, the first ninety minutes of this six part thriller. On the trail of the manuscript are a pair of particularly vicious hit men, one scene will have you rushing for the Optrex. As one of the hit men Neil Maskell plays a very similar character to the one he played in Kill List and later Michael Smiley, briefly, turned up so we had a kind of Kill List reunion.
OK, I was lost at times, but I suppose the opening episodes of this kind of show needs to be enigmatic, to keep us hooked and that kind of worked with Utopia. At least it wasn't annoying and am dram like The Shadow Line, although my heart sank when Stephen Rea turned up. Please don't do another naff turn like you did in The Shadow line I thought.
There is obviously some sort of colour code thing going on, that I'm a little too dense to pick up on, the greens and yellows, perhaps we should let the on line forums sort that one out. And at times Utopia felt a little Matrix like, that's not too bad as long as it doesn't slide into Reloaded. So I'll certainly be watching the second episode, I just wonder how many of us will be around for the sixth?
Over
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