While Series 2 has lost much of the obliqueness of its predecessor – and there is no doubt that Utopia this year has used its torture spoon to feed you plot rather than push perplexities in your eye – the fact there are fewer questions has left greater space to admire performance of its talented … >
If you’ve ever read Alan Partridge’s autobiography ‘I, Partridge’, you’ll remember the chapter where he details his detective series, ‘Swallow’. It’s a morass of cop cliches and odd ideas; a police procedural from the Monkey Tennis mind. BBC One’s pilot for the police comedy drama Walter seems to have come from the same place, but … >
‘Secrets are weird,’ Ephra Stein (Andrew Buchan) tells sister Nessa (Maggie Gyllenhaal). ‘People think you share them – but you don’t.’ Not if you’re a selfish, narcissistic, emotionally-stunted handpump hopelessly in thrall to the Israeli government, MI5 and your own penis, perhaps. But if you’re the best British drama series of 2014 (note to Hugo … >
You know Chekhov’s Gun, right? The dramatic principle that everything should have a purpose. Anton Chekhov explained it with a rifle – ‘If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be there’ – and Utopia loves to follow that rule. Hardly is a pistol pulled in Episode 4 without someone’s blood painting the wall. … >
Giving drama a backdrop of contemporary world events is a double-edged sword. While it lends realism and gravitas to a story that might otherwise be as fantastic as it is fantastic (as it were), it can also be like trying to use a live tiger as a sofa: there’s a real danger of it biting … >
What’s a modern conspiracy thriller without some hacking? Nothing. Since humanity first hooked its TV up to an Atari to play Pong, ‘hacking’ has been an entirely misrepresented but convenient techno-obfustication to leapfrog plot difficulties faster than the speed of typing. It’s the wi-fi Expelliarmus. A deus.exe machina. And it’s no different in Utopia, where … >
It’s probably a bit early to be reaching for True Detective-sized superlatives when discussing The Honourable Woman. Yet with each instalment surpassing the last, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to resist. Comparisons with Nic Polazzo’s acclaimed thriller are both fitting and inappropriate. The suspense that hangs over Hugo Blick’s serial like Victorian smog, making it almost … >
Twelve episodes sooner than normal, we reach the end of the latest season of 24. Live Another Day has been an experiment from the off – a twist on the formula designed to breathe new life into the show and hopefully extend the longevity of the franchise for future seasons – and as we reach … >
Making last night’s Episode 1 feel increasingly redundant, the second instalment of Utopia 2 brings us up to speed on where everyone is since we last left them aaaaaages ago, and does little else. But only in a show like this could that not really matter. Because Utopia is so abrasively bonkers it manages to … >
In 2005, a group of teenage girls from Drumchapel in Glasgow made national headline news as they spearheaded a campaign to change deportation laws in the UK, after one of their immigrant friends and her family were arrested in one of a series of dawn raids initiated by the UK Immigration Department. Glasgow Girls, a … >