Is it too much to hope the same for Utopia? Netflix and Channel 4 already have an agreement, which means that Utopia Season 1 just arrived on their UK catalogue – and Season 2 is only a matter of months away. Arrested Development, Community and Ripper Street have all been resurrected online as original shows for Netflix, Yahoo! and Amazon respectively. And they have a penchant for catering o niche crowds, who can be turned into loyal subscribers.
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It’s an understandable reason: if Channel 4 did well to commission Utopia in the first place, who wouldn’t want to encourage the potential for more unique talent and surprising series (see Humans) to get the green light? Even with Deal or No Deal and 8 Out of 10 Cats still dragging on, it’s clear that Utopia’s budget was even more expensive than Noel Edmund’s trousers – and it’s important for a channel to cater to different audiences.īut we live in a time when the Internet exists – and so do video on-demand services. “It’s always painful to say goodbye to shows we love,” added a spokesperson for the broadcaster, “but it’s a necessary part of being able to commission new drama, a raft of which are launching on the channel throughout 2015.” If it’s not on Channel 4, what does that make them? The home of Deal or No Deal and 8 Out of 10 Cats? Cancelling it, then, is effectively erasing their own definition. We couldn’t have put it better: Utopia defined Channel 4. It also has the honour of ensuring audiences will never look at a spoon in the same way again.”
Talking to Den of Geek about the decision not to renew it, they said: “Utopia is truly channel-defining: strikingly original, powered by Dennis Kelly’s extraordinary voice and brought to life in all its technicolor glory through Marc Munden’s undeniable creative flair and vision, the team at Kudos delivered a series which has achieved fervent cult status over two brilliantly warped and nail-biting series. Which is why it’s such a tragedy that Utopia has been cancelled by Channel 4. Even when it got a second season, a point when it could have become repetitive, it began not with a continuation from a cliff-hanger, but with a flashback to form a standalone prequel a bold move that, quite simply, refused to follow the rules. Combined, they formed a show that was undoubtedly British – but wholly unique. Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s experimental score was in turns scary, sad and exciting. And the music? Don’t get us started on the music.
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Its directing team – led by Marc Munden – turned the screen into a veritable comic book, full of sickly yellows and crimson reds a garish palette that played right into the show’s striking themes. The cast (including Kill List’s Neil Maskell, Four Lions’ Adeel Akhtar, Game of Thrones’ Rose Leslie and The Iron Lady’s Alexandra Roach) was a mix of known talent and fresh new faces. It was unrelentingly bleak and uncompromisingly violent and unbelievably brilliant a provocative show that felt important as well as entertaining.Īnd yet its subject matter was not the only original thing about it.
Telling the story of a group of people uncovering a global conspiracy linked to the manuscript of an unpublished graphic novel, writer Dennis Kelly (who penned the non-singing parts of Matilda: The Musical) turned what could have been a gimmicky premise into a scathing tale of corruption, environmentalism and the survival of the modern human race – with a dash of eugenics thrown in. Which is why Channel 4’s Utopia was such a stunning show. But crime thrillers, high-concept sci-fi, period dramas and more are filling up our screens – series may have something special about them, but many largely fall into a genre or sub-genre that feels familiar. Television is going through something of a golden age at the moment, from Breaking Bad through to Amazon’s Transparent.
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How often is it that you can say a TV programme is unique?
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