Utopia’s second season shut up shop in deliberately ambiguous fashion, as you probably suspected it would, leaving enough dangling plot threads and questions to cats-cradle into a third season.

That’s if the show gets one. Writer Dennis Kelly may have plans for a third and fourth season, but ratings for the show have been disappointing, with one episode being beaten by MTV’s indelible mind-stain Geordie Shore.

That’s not Utopia‘s fault as much as it is humanity’s. Apparently we’d rather watch drunk orange mannequins rutting atop a pile of empty bottles than a quality drama. Release the JANUS virus.

And though Season 2 lacked some of the frenetic, unpredictable energy we expected after Season 1 – opting instead to explore the most bonkers family dynamic since the Lannisters – it remains one of the best British dramas out there, and we at CultBox love it enough to think it deserves another stab. Or shot. Shot’s probably more apt given the gunplay it enjoys.

> Order Season 2 on DVD on Amazon.

So without further ado, here’s a spoonful of reasons to shove in your eye…

 

Questions need answering

Obvious, but true. You can’t leave us hanging.

Will the new Mr Rabbit and his presumably very sore torso succeed in his plan to release JANUS? Arby/Pietri woke up, but what is his fate? Will Dugdale ever escape the clutches of The Network? Was it The Network that rounded up everyone at gunpoint at the end of the episode, or are there other forces at work?

A new shadowy organisation playing off against The Network would be a good way to add new mystery to the show.

 

We’re in too deep

In the short term, there are questions to answer, but thinking longer term, we’re curious to see just how and where it will all end. Like ‘The Utopia Experiments’ forum group, we’re in too deep now to walk away.

Following the Instagram-tinged flashback ep that opened Season 2, we’d love to see a flashforward into Milner’s utopian future with a grown-up Grant and Alice.

 

It’s got a great cast

It has. And we want to see more of them. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett was particularly good this season, especially at the point where he learned of his brother’s death, giving a very moving and wholly natural human reaction.

Fiona O’Shaughnessy also deserves a mention; thanks to her wide-eyed, almost insectoid, distance you were never sure whether Jessica was going to hug you or garotte you with your own tongue.

There were some terrific new additions too. Tom Burke and Steve Robertson were all-too-temporary in their time on the show but thankfully elder statesman Ian McDiarmid stuck around as the tortured mind Anton/Philip Carvel. Hopefully he’ll return for another cerebral cocktail of gibbering and cold rationalism. And if there is a third season I want to see a bigger role for Dugdale’s wife Jen (Ruth Gemmell). Mrs Dugdale is kick-ass.

 

There really is nothing else like it on TV

Where else would you see a hallucination dip a chip in his head wound? What show would bring in talent (Sacha Dhawan, Kevin Eldon, Steve Robertson) and kill off their characters so easily? What show could squeeze the thematic colour yellow into as many scenes?

It’s British dramatic idiosyncrasy at its most ballsy and Channel 4-sy. You can’t imagine any other channel making it. You can’t imagine any other country making it. Oh wait, what’s that America…? You’re doing what?

 

Pure patriotism

Since the announcement was made earlier this year, people seem to have forgotten that HBO has greenlit an adaptation of Utopia for American eyes, and that Fight Club‘s David Fincher will be directing.

Fincher’s involvement excites, but why the US can’t just be happy airing our good old British version is all part of The Gracepoint Conundrum (a theory formerly known as The Inbetweeners Conspiracy, formerly The Spaced Clusterfuck).

Why does this mean we need a Season 3? Well, to keep the British end up of course.

We need another season, hopefully more ingenious and energetic than Season 2 and just as intriguing and twisty-turny as Season 1. And if it were to be the final season, we want to go out with all guns – and spoons – blazing.

 

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What would you want to see in a third season? Let us know below…