Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Geraldine James, Fiona O’ Shaughnessy, Neil Maskell, Adel Akhtar, Paul Higgins, Alexandra Roach, Nathan Stewart-Jarratt, Oliver Woollford, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Michael Maloney, Ian McDiarmid, Paul Ready, Ruth Gemmel, Sacha Dhawan, Martin McDougal, Emilia Jones, Sofe Dirisu, Richard Laing.
Could you kill? Could you really think about pulling a trigger and blowing somebody’s head apart from their soul? The world is on the edge of extinction and somebody has a plan in which to save Humanity as a species, many billions will fade out of existence eventually but they will have at least lived, unlike the possible tens of thousands who are to become carriers of disease in which, to some is actually a better prospect than what could come.
This is how Utopia stands, the chance to restore balance to the Earth in favour of roughly 500 million survivors, that’s roughly 1/14th of the total amount of people of the planet in 2014, the ideal amount in which it would take to stop running out of everything by the start of the 22nd Century. The amount it would take to no longer be a burden on the Earth and yet such a premise is a thought that cannot surely be countenanced unless in the realms of science fiction or in the master mind behind the gripping series Utopia.
Not only has the second series moved on so quickly to the point of delivery, it actually has more than ever a ring of disturbing truth to it, that the writer, Dennis Kelly has caught hold of something so tangible, so terrifyingly real that questions are begged but dare not answered. From the opening segment of a family being shot to set up the vaccines placement to the ease in which to protect the secret of Janus has seen scores of people shot in cold blood and even the most-mildest of men in Wilson Wilson, portrayed by the superb Adeel Akhtar, become a ruthless killer, the man has suddenly developed a taste for the scent of a bullet rushing through the air, is the Nuclear bomb of Flu so big a secret that anybody who knows about it sure to die.
The writer has asked many good questions throughout the series however one has stood out more than any other and in a society which has become used to seeing murder/somebody being shot dead, has the viewer become so willing in the visual participation that they have become an accomplice in the proceedings? That the murder of hundreds of children in a remote land could just be another television programme in which to talk about over the morning paper but not the desired effect on having the person ask why?
In a world that has become so detached from its fellow man’s feeling, where we are all shouting to be heard but never actually taking the moment to listen, has the viewer actually become the silent assassin, Utopia seems to suggest that it has.
This extraordinary story continues next Tuesday.
Ian D. Hall