Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Burke, Rose Leslie, Anca-Ioana Androne, Tim McInnerny, Trystan Gravelle, Clive Wood, Pamela Ashton, William Belchambers, Ed Birch, Vicenzo Ferrara, Aine Garvey, Lorna Gayle, Yare Michael Jegbefume, Solomon Mousley, Harley Rooney, Mason Rooney, James Stratton, Kevin Trainor, Velile Tshabalala.

In your life time, depending on how old you are, the population of the Earth has almost tripled. Seven billion people fighting for a scraps of land, for food, water, over religion, over the right to survive and the right to have a family, Seven billion souls, who thanks to the advancement in healthcare, the quick eradication of infectious diseases and peace keeping forces, seemingly take up more resources than the world can actually supply. Such is the dystopian plot that makes up one of Channel 4’s finest programmes in over a decade, Utopia.

Series One of this acclaimed drama was so utterly compelling that there just had to be a follow-on, a sequel in which the lives of those affected by the events that hounded them at every step could be seen as just the very beginning of the nightmare scenario that had unfolded before them. What was also needed though was a true defining back story, not something cobbled together on the back of Channel 4 notepaper but something so convincing that a television drama about conspiracy theories could actually make the most of the conspiracy theories that has been chewed over since the 1970s, the machinations of Government shadows are not just dreamt up over a pie and pint at the local it seems.

By using documented cases as part of the drama, the assassination of Airey Neave, the three day week, the accident at Three Mile Island, the single vote that bought about the no-confidence in James Callaghan’s Government, planes being bought down by bombs…by using these historic and detailed events as part of the back story, it was as if Channel 4 had regained some of that edge that is was famous for when it first started broadcasting. Whilst Utopia is no A Very British Coup, it is streets ahead of almost anything else you could care to mention.

At times, the events that unfolded were bought to forefront of the viewer’s mind, more so than the actual plot which bought about Mr. Rabbit, the hunt for the source of what could bring about the down scaling of Humanity and the violence that dominates the programme.

A prequel is always hard to pull off, viewers have already gathered much about many of the characters whose names they instantly recognise but writer Dennis Kelly brings into play so many connections, so many hidden agendas and traits that the intrigue is unstoppable. With a cast that included the superb Tom Burke and Rose Leslie as Scientist Philip Carvel and the secretive Milner, as well as the superb cameos from Tim McInnerny as Airey Neave and Clive Wood as Dr. Isherwood, this is one prequel that captures the imagination and sends a shudder down the spine. The ideas are plentiful, on many levels they attest to the reek that comes out of Whitehall and the Palace of Westminster and the collusion at the heart of Government, Dennis Kelly should be congratulated for weaving such an intricate tale together.

Mouth-watering and chilling, a solid piece of treachery is afoot.

Utopia season two continues tonight on Channel 4.

Ian D. Hall