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

That was a bit of a ride, wasn't it?

Spent most of the first hour waiting for the plot to begin to come together, but when it did it was at such a pace that it's hard to see how they're going to spin it out for six episodes so there must be much more they're not telling us at this point. Torture scenes were a bit nasty really.

A lot of the show was saying "that's thingy out of what's it called!" Spotted Curtis off Misfits, Faisal (? the one that gets blown up with the sheep) off Four Lions, Jamie off The Thick Of It and Wheels off Spaced.

Liked this, very much so at times. Terrific cast and interesting characters (esp. Wilson Wilson, hoping he makes some kind of recovery). Good to see the guy from Kill List getting to nasty things up again. He was only in it briefly last night, but I'll watch anything with Stephen Rea too.

I'd read a bit about the torture scene in previews, wld agree it was nasty but I guess I've become jaded thanks to films like I Saw the Devil, Haute Tension, Martyrs etc as it hardly compared to those. Novel though, and nicely played for pitch-black lols by the torturer.

On board for next episode, although I can see it going into a rabbit warren of ever more complex conspiracy tat which wld be disappointing. That said, Dennis Kelly surprised me plenty of times with Pulling so perhaps I'm giving him too little credit.

Yeah, I'm coming to the conclusion it's going to be the best thing on C4 in some time. Wilson Wilson is the bloke for 4 Lions, and yes, was aces. Good spot on the Kill List guy though, I knew I knew him from somewhere.

Oh absolutely the torture was really reined in, but not for mainstream(ish) television. Bleach was maybe a step too far?

I think that's the big danger, that the plot will get convoluted to the point where I (and you) don't care about it any more.

I enjoyed this, some of the writing was a bit clunky, particularly when minor characters got involved, but the mystery at the centre of it is compelling enough to keep watching.

Jesus Christ that torture scene. I'll never look at my spice rack in the same way again.

Sand. The secret of Mum DC's cooking.

Sand and bleach. The torturer needed some wood chippings in there for true authenticity.

I will watch anything with Stephen Rea in it. His turn as Gatehouse in Shadow Line is one of the best things I have seen on British tv.

Oh, I thought I spotted Stephen Rea in the trailer, good stuff. Have this recorded, glad people are liking it. I shall keep a cushion handy to hide behind during the torture bit.

>His turn as Gatehouse in Shadow Line

OTM. Was talking about Utopia with colleague yesterday and we both went "but what about Stephen Rea in The Shadow Line!". That series was superb, and he was like a black hole in the centre of it; just wonderful.

He's a bit of a black hole in the centre of this as well, we don't know much about him at all but he's clearly this behind-the-scenes puppet master type.

Yeah, loved how the new Minister revealed he's part of the mission too.

I missed that, I'd assumed the Russian flu thing was forcing the country to stockpile for Something Really Bad, but it could also have been a conspiracy to get rid of the minister and put their own man in place.

I was pleased with myself cos half an hour into this I said to my gf "If I know my comics a new person will show up at the end of this and the episode's last words will be 'I'm Jessica Hyde'," which was kinda obvious but cool to be spot on.

When the new minister introduces himself to Not Jamie he signs off saying something like "good to know I have a man I can trust, one who does the right thing and carries out the mission." Steven Rea talked about the mission as well, which was why I made the connection - could be a fake-out though.

I assumed Jessica Hyde would turn up like that too, but then Heroes pulled the same trick twice in the first season so I half-thought they would think it was too obvious.

Yeah it occurred to me the Jamie guy is so freaked out and paranoid that he'll do anything if anyone mentions the word "mission" and the Russian flu thing had absolutely nothing to do with the threats made to him.

Wow, just watched the first episode. I thought it was incredible! I sure hope they can take the premise all the way and it doesn't fizzle out, but the acting and everything was really good.

Big question for me is how does a mentally-ill geneticist get so good at illustration? The pages shown of Utopia look awfully well done for an amateur trying release his demons or whatever.

Also, I laughed pretty hard when Ian's supervisor or whatever chided him for being on forums instead of filling out some spreadsheet... I'm sure no one here is ever guilty of that...

Big question for me is how does a mentally-ill geneticist get so good at illustration

Amateur doesn't necessarily mean bad. I know some pretty good non-professional artists.

Expect you were all expecting that post to be about ep 2 but I just watched the first one, hopefully will catch up tomorrow.

This is very good fun, but I don't follow the main Russian/bird flu plot at all.

^^glad i'm not the only one. at the moment i'm only really into it when neil maskell shows up.

The music in this is nutso

strong month for debut UK TV w/this & my mad fat diary

Really liking this. I'm in a similar boat re: the government scenes, but I'm kind of okay with floating along with 'it's some big conspiracy thing about the creation of a disease' for the moment.

I can't bring myself to watch My Mad Fat Diary because the name is just TOO horrible and offensive.

Everything about this is cool apart from the yawnsome plot. Secret uberpowerful shadow organisation, bioweapons being tested on civilians, "come with me if you want to live"; not sure there's a single novel idea there. Will watch the whole thing though.

I was struggling to keep up after ep 2.

Jessica is a double (at least) agent, Becky is a double agent, the guy with the gas and the sweets is a triple agent gone rogue. The Tramp was just weird. That said, Not Jamie's prostitute gf being framed for the death of the newsman was great and I'm loving the James Fox/Steven Rea/Not Jamie stuff.

Oh, wait, I was believing Jessica's story about herself, so was thinking she wasn't any x-number agent but rather a lone wolf. Was it flagged up that she was lying? (Though of course it would make sense - why would she tell these particular people the truth anyway?)

I totally get what seandalai's saying but I still think it's fun.

watched both eps last night.
some genuinely laugh out loud moments ("i'm totally net invisible", "yeah, but you use your real name on a forum", "ahh but no-ones going to believe that" )
.. and some pretty nasty (for tv) moments of excess.
loved it.
not bothered about trying to figure out who is double crossing who, just enjoying the ride ..

The way Jessica took care of The Tramp was (imo) supposed to flag that she wasn't who she said she was - the "he gave up the name too easily" story to Ian just seemed like an easy lie to cover up for the fact she was supposed to do it. To look at it a different way, if anybody who could turn her in/lead the bad guys to her should be removed from the plot then how come the family were left tied up in the garage for the guy with the gas and sweets to kill?

I think I need to watch it all again but my suspicion is that him and the guy Wilson killed after the torture are the clean-up squad for loose ends that Jessica leaves behind, as he just seems to get rid of people without necessarily letting them tell him where she is. "Where is Jessica Hyde" is just because he knows she'll have left a loose end (like not killing the agent who was posing as the widow) so he's running in her wake.

if anybody who could turn her in/lead the bad guys to her should be removed from the plot then how come the family were left tied up in the garage for the guy with the gas and sweets to kill?

Because the Tramp knew exactly who she was and what she was doing, and the family were just people who happened to come home from holiday and had no idea what was going on, and the idea to leave it looking like a burglary was better than murdering them all, which would be a massive flag to the authorities?

Don't see how murdering the family would be a flag to the authorities - it could still just look like a burglary gone wrong. The point is she doesn't kill people in front of Ian/Becky (although the Tramp shows she's beginning to do things in front of Ian) to give the impression she is who she says she is.

The authorities don't seem to be interested in, or catching up with gas/sweets bloke and he's murdering them. According to Jessica he (and his dead mate, although what if Wilson's actually playing the other side too and he didn't kill him...) is a rogue/lone agent too who left the conspiracy and is working alone so the same rules about revealing yourself apply to him.

I think there are three bits I need to watch again:

Jessica's 'confession' to Ian
Jessica's torture of the 'widow'
Jessica and The Tramp in the toilet. Did she call him 'Dad' at one point?

The point is she doesn't kill people in front of Ian/Becky... to give the impression she is who she says she is.

Or it could be the explicitly stated reason (to Becky - "you're not strong enough yet").

(although the Tramp shows she's beginning to do things in front of Ian)

So why would she be dropping the pretence so easily in front of him? This arc is much more easily explained by her testing his mettle and feeling that he can deal with adapting to the brutality of his new reality.

I dunno, I just don't think it's anywhere near as complicated as you think it is/want it to be. To be honest, I'm not even sure that Becky's a double agent - she was pitching a doctoral thesis on Utopia at the beginning, right? It's theoretically possible that that phone call was some sort of benign check-in with her supervisor or some such. (Not committing to that theory, either, just saying that it's possible.)

I know what you mean, but I'm sure there's something in the dialogue which means it is that complicated (hence why I want to watch it again).

I take your point on Becky. But...

what if they're all double agents? Wilson can make a random laptop 'invisible' in a new house with no hardware, yet in his own house he needed a whole room of electronics? It could all be a satire on undercover people reporting on each other - wasn't there something similar happened with Special Branch around the time of MacLibel?

I don't think we've been shown any clear clues that JH is *bad*, just that she's pretty fucked up (not surprising if you believe she's been on the run since age 4). But I fully expect each episode to dump new and unforeseeable twists on us.

OK:

The Tramp is at the house of the guy in the beginning who posts issue 2 then kills himself (which the CIA confirm they know). The hitman turns up at the bit of road where the guy killed himself then speaks into his phone and appears to get another location. Although if he's just following blindly (as Jessica tells Ian) is there even anyone at the other end of the phone?

Jessica promises Wilson "they" are picking up his dad when she first turns up at the house. We're supposed to think that means taking him to safety (as does Becky, possibly, when she looks him up on the internet), but what if she actually does keep her promise and "they" are taking him back home to kill him in a faked botched burglary (which is what Becky later does to the family)?

When Jessica tells them about the Soviets and the Network, Ian asks why that's important and Jessica says that's who's after them. She never specifies which side.

Jessica asks Ian if he has the manuscript (NB we have not been shown her telling him of the link between the Soviets/The Network and Utopia although obviously she could have done without us seeing) as if she has no idea where it is, but thinks it's possible he has it. So she's connected enough to know personal things about Wilson (the invisible man) and where Becky lives but not that the guy was thrown off the roof before they were all supposed to meet? It seems weird she isn't able to make that connection, or maybe she's several steps ahead and is being deliberately disingenuous?

"I hack airline companies looking for people on holiday". When does she find time to do this if she thinks the first safe house can be compromised at any point? Not saying it's a thing, but we never see her with a computer at any point especially not 'invisibly' so if someone was looking for her she'd be really easy to find if you knew that was her MO.

When Jessica tells the story of Karvell she said he went mad and was going to be killed but was smuggled out. She then says she was smuggled out with him having previously been held hostage to keep him working. Part of this smacks of a daughter not wanting to think of her dad doing wrong (and having to be forced to keep on doing bad things) being a background note in a cover story to me. Also she was smuggled out with him "when I was 4. I've been on the run ever since." Firstly, having gone to the effort of smuggling the pair of them out, you'd think whoever did it would do the same sort of thing for her (new identity, false family etc) rather than dump her. I appreciate her 'on the run' is not supposed to be literally since she was 4, but from what age then? When she found out who her real father was? If so, all her knowledge about Karvell and hospital/writing Utopia is received wisdom and not her own memories so could either be planted false memories or just a cover story. Also note the concept of being smuggled out from the inside and good bad guys introduces the idea of double agents into the overall plot.

There's something about the way Jessica looks at Becky as she takes Ian out to trace the comic which makes me think she knows the family are coming back or she sends a fake family back to see how Becky reacts and to see if she's (or make her) ready. This would tie in with the Hitman being her cleanup crew. On top of this, Jessica and Ian go somewhere after the torture and stay out overnight. Why? If you've got a blind man and someone you think isn't ready in your safe house surely you'd try and get back as soon as you can? We know the publisher's house isn't far because they get there in clear daylight. What's the smash of glass when Becky is in the bath that alerts her to the fact the family are letting themselves in with their own keys? Jessica has set up the booby trap but to the door - and the door isn't open by the time Becky is downstairs with a towel on pointing a gun at them. After Jessica and Ian get back, Jessica isn't surprised at all by the family in the garage and has already set up a new safe house. She has written down the address and gives it to Becky - when did she have time to do this if she was with Ian?

Why does Jessica take Ian to the publisher's house with the fake widow when she must know he's dead? If he posted the comic to the dealer in Scotland then killed himself it went to Scotland by mail, then back to London, then changed hands at least once. On that basis he's been dead for at least a week - which, as with the death of the guy thrown off the building, you'd think she'd know. Especially if she's online all the time establishing future safe houses and keeping track of Becky, Ian and Wilson (given Becky is able to find out about Wilson's dad's death in seconds). After all, she always knew his name and address so why go backwards to somewhere you know it isn't when you know as much as he knew about where he sent it? She clubs the fake widow because "police turn up asking to see your dead husband and you don't ask why?" Well, actually, the fake widow answers everything she asks so she has no reason to suspect. My guess is that she knows and this is some kind of test for Ian. "That's how they work. They have people high up who get their drones to do their work for them." This is designed to desensitise Ian to the CIA agent, that she doesn't matter, so he can accept torture and (maybe) murder. After all, the next time we see him he's soaking her with water so she can be threatened with electrocution.

The hitman turns up at the publishers because (he claims) the CIA woman didn't phone in. This is potentially just a cover on his part to get her trust, but there are a couple of problems with this. If he didn't know she was tied up, because someone told him, then it's just a coincidence, which feels wrong. And if someone told him, why kill her? And why didn't Jessica? (fake burglary and all that?)

When Becky looks up Wilson's dad he was shot at 4:30pm and neighbours alerted the police to "a loud bang" (singular) yet his dad was supposedly shot in the face and chest (i.e. multiple shots). So the bang they hear which calls the police is Wilson shooting the hitman/torturer? Yet nobody sees Becky's car pulling away? The news story also says Wilson is missing. At this point Wilson tells Becky that Grant has it.

The Tramp's conversation with Jessica appears to reveal nothing deeper other than at the end when he says "I'm on your side. I'm one of them." One of who? I thought (and even earlier in the same conversation) they were all loners. Now, we know he was a scientist at the Network and so therefore "them" could, and probably does, refer to the people who smuggled out Karvell and Jessica but those same people abandoned her which is why she's been on the run 'since she was 4'. And the Tramp recognises her, so has seen her as an adult. So either their paths have crossed (and you'd wonder why, since it's only the new work on Janus that's made the manuscript important) meaning she isn't much cop at covering her tracks after all (leading to the question of how she's managed to do it for so many years) or she was an adult when she left "them". On another listen he said he found out there was a part two when Karvell told him after he visited him in hospital. Then says he went to the hospital in the first place to get part two. Both can't be true. There's also significance in the name of the project. Janus. Two-faced. Another hint that nobody is what they seem? On a side note, by now Ian is inured enough to go and steal a car while Jessica kills the tramp. Yes, he argues with her about it but when she explains she says "why are you being so odd?" The way she says it makes me think she thinks he's an agent of somebody.

When James Fox asks Not Jamie "what do you want it for?" about the vaccine he uses exactly the same cadence as when Jessica asked the Tramp "what did you want it for" about issue 2.

When Becky uses the phone at the end, she says "It's me. The manuscript exists. The boy knows where it is." Doesn't sound like it's a casual phone call to her supervisor.

So no smoking gun about Jessica, but too much that doesn't add up. I would quite happily think I'm reading too much into this, but it's deliberately designed to be a plot about people sucked into a conspiracy that's too complex for them to grasp, and has a viral site where you try and find out as much as you can about the Utopia experiments before "they" catch you. I think you're supposed to analyse it and find the depth of the conspiracy. And that as an alternate reading, if you just see/hear the dialogue once and are in it (like Ian) you see the face value only.

Or I could just be a mentalist.

Actually, I've spotted a mistake in what I've typed there. I could have sworn Jessica told Ian about the hitman being a rogue agent but she completely fails to. I'm not even sure where I got that idea from.

Jessica has set up the booby trap but to the door - and the door isn't open by the time Becky is downstairs with a towel on pointing a gun at them.

I thought she said it was a tripwire in the garden? Didn't watch as closely as you did though.

I'm a bit sceptical that all these off-notes are truly meaningful and not just lazy writing. I've been burned too many times before by trusting that the writers are in control of every detail.

Yes, I worry that I'm expecting too much of the writer of Matilda The Musical.

I'm a bit sceptical that all these off-notes are truly meaningful and not just lazy writing.

This is totally what the vast majority of them are. And some of them aren't even 'lazy' but 'minorly unlikely', when as everyone knows, reality is more unlikely than most fiction. The rest are psychological motivations which seem 'wrong' to aldo, which is a completely subjective thing. I'm fairly sure if he scrutinised my actions versus my words he'd find my backstory incredibly sketchy.

defo

If the Jamie guy weren't so dumb he might at some point have asked himself how the hell anyone knows for sure it was him who got the Russian prostitute pregnant.

So the big mystery then is where Jessica and Ian go to after the interrogation of the CIA agent, and why. They leave the house in the afternoon and aren't seen again until the following afternoon when they meet The Tramp. Since he's only on foot, and we know he was at the publisher's house, he can't be sufficiently far to justify an overnight journey (especially since they get back to the house quickly after killing him) and there's a scene between Becky & Wilson that directly draws the viewers' attention to them not coming back at night and how odd it is, so it's not just a writing omission.

That scene is there to amp up the tension, emphasise Becky's sexual jealousy, contrast the emotional states of the pairs of characters and give B&W a plausible amount of time to start breaking Jessica's rules, though? It's not a writing omission, it's a narrative ploy.

Do we have any proof that Anya (sp?) is actually pregnant? Though I guess if she was framed for the murder (but was that TV footage real?), then she's hardly in on the plot.

odd that the pharma goons knew exactly when to turn on the TV.

just watched e2. some of the analysis upthread is wild. this tv show is not going to be complex. the whole "where is jessica hyde" thing is enough for me to be 100 per cent positive she will be a "good" character throughout.

So why would she be dropping the pretence so easily in front of him? This arc is much more easily explained by her testing his mettle and feeling that he can deal with adapting to the brutality of his new reality.

exactly right. the next scene was becky being told she did the right thing by tying up the family, completely hammered home as a way of showing she's adapting where her pal isn't.

this show is really silly and just weighed down with cliché after cliché, it reminds me of Killer Net, but has the same pulpy appeal. anyone recall that show?

YOU FLAMED ME!

the whole "where is jessica hyde" thing is enough for me to be 100 per cent positive she will be a "good" character throughout

Think it's more likely that both sides will turn out to be the bad guys with the comic book nerds in the middle of it. But yeah it's not exactly complex, enjoyable enough though although I thought the second episode really suffered from jettisoning a lot of the humour in the first ep.

btw jessica hyde is hot

would go on crime spree with

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.

An Amazon "Original". Do words mean anything anymore?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfMBkiPFh-k

oh, no longer a Fincher thing I see. I'll watch this since it's been a few years since I saw the original; but the second series of the original was a disaster and the whole thing kind of fell apart. maybe they can rectify that.

The reboot has brought some fans of the original out of the woodwork, and one scanned the rare The Utopia Experiments graphic novel produced for the original in its entirety.

Without Neil Maskell as the wheezy psychopath this remake cannot possibly
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/hbo-utopia/images/4/4c/Arby.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140218210738be worth watching.

Assuming Christopher Denham in the Amazon remake is playing the same role as that guy (wikipedia says yes), he's sufficiently creepy imo. I haven't finished this one's first season yet, but I get the impression this one's dialed up the grimness and cast aside the humor nearly altogether.

Downloaded the UK original today, time to finally set up a home Plex again.

Have been watching this! The original is one of the best things I ever saw, series 2 falls off a lot but still great (70s flashback episode is one of my favourite episodes of tv ever). This adaptation is interesting? Feels a bit too on the nose at times, tonally very different and obviously lacking the colour palette/spooky score, but it’s pretty fucked up! Interested in keeping watching all the same.

Christopher Denham btw is very creepy, but in a wholly American way, and he’s not Neil Maskey but it’s a good take on the character.

Suspect that if I already feel Gillian Flynn's an overrated hack then this retread of a better show will not persuade me otherwise.

gyac's critical support making me consider watching this - I too think the first season is amazing and the second season is half amazing/half pointless.

It is critical yeah, it’s a very different beast but interesting if you loved the original as much as I do. We did laugh at the warning before of the episodes that it doesn’t represent a real pandemic, lol. Very timely in terms of the conspiratorial times we live in.

Not having seen the original, the tone of this American version immediately reminded me of the first season of Orphan Black. Had zero clue what would happen in the next five minutes, but couldn't wait to find out. Except with bigger stakes and more explicit body horror (something I can't really cope with too well). Thankfully, those scenes are short and easy to turn away from.

Linking the same sequence in the original series so you can compare without spoiling it for anyone else.

The American one is gorier fwiw

Chris Denham directed a pretty good but hard to Google found-footage horror movie called Home Movie once upon a time.

I'm not gonna check this out though cause the original series was wildly overrated and this is apparently worse

Home Movie is great.

As for the show, I will refrain from being 'that guy' who dips into a thread and shits all over the topic of discussion.

Also anyone who likes Dennis Kelly’s work should be watching The Third Day, which is being dribbled out an episode a week and features gorgeous visuals and a Cristobal Tapia de Veer score like Utopia.

I already feel Gillian Flynn's an overrated hack then this retread of a better show will not persuade me otherwise.

I loved Gone Girl - the movie, anyway - but yeah everything else she's touched not so hot.

The reboot has brought some fans of the original out of the woodwork, and one scanned the rare The Utopia Experiments graphic novel🕸 produced for the original in its entirety.