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Sep 23, 2020 · Amazon's "Utopia" is an at-times maddening, at-times fascinating, but always twisty show that thrives on shocking you. Especially in the hands of showrunner/writer Gillian Flynn (based on a Channel 4 series in the UK by Dennis Kelly), it's been designed in part to push people’s buttons about the kind of stories that you can and can’t tell.
Sep 29, 2020 · The first thing you see when you begin streaming Utopia on Amazon Prime is a disclaimer. It informs you that the show is a work of fiction not based on “actual, related, or current events.”
Sep 25, 2020 · Gillian Flynn’s dystopian comic-book thriller for Amazon Prime Video takes a band of nerds down a fortuitously timely rabbit hole. Share full article. The discovery of a lost comic book prompts ...
- Down the rabbit hole.
- Amazon's Utopia - 20 images
- Verdict
By Matt Purslow
Posted: Sep 25, 2020 11:50 am
This is a spoiler-free review of Amazon’s Utopia. All eight episodes are currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
After six months of enduring a pandemic, many of us have likely seen at least one conspiracy theory making the rounds on social media, suggesting that the virus has been engineered as part of a shadowy plan to control us. Amazon’s Utopia - the US remake of a stylish British thriller - asks the outlandish question: what if the conspiracies were true? The result is a satisfyingly twisty, well-paced labyrinth of mysteries that delivers on thrills, but can’t quite live up to the high bar set by its source material.
It should be made clear out of the gate that, despite its timing, Utopia is not a response to our current world situation, nor is it actually all that interested in exploring the effects of an epidemic. There are no masks or social distancing here, and the story largely follows in the footsteps established by the 2013 British original, back when nationwide quarantine seemed a sci-fi concept in itself. However, the current pandemic does add an uneasy layer of paranoia to the proceedings that Utopia doesn’t provide itself.
Penned entirely by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, Utopia follows the gradually more desperate journey of a group of comic book nerds obsessed with Dystopia; a graphic novel that predicted a variety of deadly epidemics via messages hidden in its artwork. Within the first hour, the group discover that an unpublished sequel - Utopia - exists, and that it could hold the key to solving the mysteries behind a future epidemic conspiracy. But as the group travel further down this intriguing rabbit hole, they face violent opposition from those who’d rather the secrets were kept in the dark.
But what if you’ve never seen the original? Well, you’re still getting one of the most enjoyable TV conspiracy thrillers since The X-Files ruled the airwaves. In essence, it’s the same fantastic lyrics, just set to less interesting music. The puzzle box mystery format actually pays off audience dedication; you’re kept in the dark until the very end, but major plot reveals are dropped at just the right moments, creating an energetic pace. And that mystery is delightfully dark; a twisted look at how people in power can twist the world around their little finger that is unashamedly fictitious rather than reflective of the real world.
Sadly, it’s also a show so fascinated with its own puzzle and mythology that its characters barely get a look in. The people you meet in the pilot are left essentially unchanged by their experiences; still boring, still sometimes inexplicably able to find meaning in the art of a graphic novel, just now injured or wearing worse clothes. Again, it’s a shame Utopia stumbles here, because the perfect blueprint for these characters - a different version of the same series - has been sat there since 2013.
Amazon’s Utopia is an enjoyably twisty, dark conspiracy thriller. It avoids many of the pitfalls of puzzle box mysteries, pulling the curtain back on enough major components while still keeping audiences enjoyably in the dark until the final moments. But it suffers from weak characterisation, and lacks the stylish presentation of its British predec...
- Matt Purslow
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Sep 24, 2020 · Elizabeth Morris/Amazon Studios. CNN —. The timing for “Utopia” is either incredibly good or atrociously bad, depending on one’s tolerance for fiction that parallels current events. In ...
Sep 15, 2020 · Boiled down, Utopia is a show about a comic book that uses metaphors to reveal how sinister entities engineer a global pandemic, premiering on TV at a time when powerful people and companies have ...
Sep 25, 2020 · It's a question one particular character in Amazon's new eight-episode series Utopia demands of others, frequently. Given that the Amazon show is adapted from the first, six-episode season of a ...
