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 a textbook Hollywood hacker’s ASCII exertions result in a lovely big end of the world update (Evil Scheme Update Now? Y/N) for our motley crew of Ian, Becky, Donaldson and Arby to push the plot along.
While they were being info-dumped on the plot and Flumageddon, we technophiles were contending with a new mystery, as Grant and the man we now know to be Philip Carvel (Ian McDiarmid playing old Tom Burke, and proving I was wrong thinking Episode 1 was ‘redundant’) were watching this:
But what’s the relevance to this and Carvel’s Janus freakout? Is it more to do with the news ticker running along the screen? Is the Roomba-riding kitten-shark an allegory for Big Pharma? Why can’t Carvel speak English anymore?
Explaining things far less cryptically, in his usual monotone manner is Arby, the show’s perpetual stand-out star Neil Maskell: ‘There are no sides – just people who kill you and people who don’t’, he deadpans. And there’s plenty of people who’ll help kill you.
Utopia is a rhomboid of slaughter. Or maybe one of those eye-boggling impossible trident visual illusions where the lines seem to shift as soon as you try and look at them.
Yes, definitely an impossible trident, although Arby is no longer the flickering third prong of morality from the last episode. He’s looking out for himself and his new family, and is willing to betray any associate, especially someone as disposable as a hacker, to do so.
Marginally less quick to kill off anyone who may put him in jeopardy, Paul Higgins gives us a master-class in jittery Whitehall prevarication, as Dugdale has geeky-nosey scientist Bridget silenced for doing her job and finding too much out about the Russian Flu vaccine. Nothing can stop V-Day, not even Jessica’s ruthlessly efficient escape from The Network.
The least successful prong in the murderous illusion trident (yep, still hanging on that metaphor) is Wilson with one ‘i’, who manages to let Lee get within thwacking distance of his kneecap, despite holding a gun, voicing his intention to kill, and all of us shouting ‘Do it!’ through the screen.
Aired at 10pm on Tuesday 22 July 2014 on Channel 4.
> Order Series 2 on DVD on Amazon.
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