Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Geraldine James, Neil Maskell, Fiona O’Shaughnessy, Adeel Akhtar, Paul Higgins, Alistair Petrie, Alexandra Roach, Nathen Stewart- Jarratt, Oliver Woollford, Kevin Eldon, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Michael Maloney, Ian McDiarmid, Paul Ready, Will Attenborough, Allan Corduner, Juliet Cowan, Keith Farnham, Candida Gubbins, Alex Lowe, Bruce Mackinnon, Gerard Monaco, Damien Thomas.
Utopia is never meant to be reached, if it was then Sir Thomas More completely missed the point as he wrote in praise to England before finding himself on the wrong side of a King’s wrath. Dystopia on the other hand is the easiest level of human attainment and for those on the run in Channel 4’s riveting series, Utopia, dystopia might actually be more preferable.
With sides being redrawn, with old friends no longer really sure who their enemy actually is and an old befuddled genius warning them of their fate, portrayed by an engaging Ian McDiarmid, it seems that trust is a commodity that is straightforward as a control mechanism if deployed whilst holding a gun. It is when there is no chance of getting a bullet in the back when belief in the other person dies.
For someone who doesn’t need a gun to get what she requires, there surely cannot be a more interestingly more complex, dangerously complicated or even just intricately psychotic woman on British television at the moment than Jessica Hyde, portrayed by the equally attention grabbing and focused Fiona O’ Shaughnessy. The character and the actress are so deeply entwined that to watch Ms. O’ Shaughnessy stare unnervingly into space as she is being carted off to a laboratory so that Milner and her co-conspirators can gain access to the Janus code is to see into the mind that harbours many secrets; you want to trust this well written character but somehow you know she will destroy you as quick as those planning to sterilise humanity.
It is a tribute to Ms. O’ Shaughnessy’s sublime skill as an actor that the thought provoking action, or indeed inaction, says more in the blink of an eye than some writers can convey in five pages of dialogue, an astounding feat.
If the first series of Utopia was gut wrenchingly superb, then this second series is the kind of manipulative power that television can really have on the imagination, three episodes in and is as addictive as anything you could care to name.
Utopia series two continues next Tuesday.
Ian D. Hall