Utopia (2013)

After I watched the Amazon series Utopia, I discovered that it was a remake of a British show.  Dare I watched the original?  Yes, I dare.

The story opens at a comic book store.  There is a clerk and a few customers.  In walks a pair of men, one of whom bashes a customer over the head with a lead pipe.  The other, Arby, asks the clerk who bought the Utopia comic.  Once all the patrons and clerk are dead, the two men depart.  Meanwhile, Benjen gets on his chat group to announce he has purchased Utopia.  They plan a meetup.  However, before he leaves, Arby and friend show up to murder him.  Simultaneously Graham - one of his chat buddies - steals the comic during the murder.  Now Graham is on the run while the rest of the chat group - Ian, Becky, and Wilson - try to figure out what has happened.

Unlike the American version, the original Utopia comic mentions nothing about Jessica Hyde.  There is more nuance in the British version despite having a shorter runtime.  That was strange.  Rather than a scientist who discovered a flu, Michael is a midlevel bureaucrat in the health ministry.  The character of Samantha doesn't even exist here, which is just as well.  Characters that were rather shallow in the American version are better fleshed out.  Also, they aren't some monolithic group.  Becky is hiding something, Wilson is ambivalent about whether they are on the right side, and the identity of Mr. Rabbit is a lot harder to determine.  Jessica Hyde looks less like a homeless person but has a dead-inside quality that suits the character.

Whereas the end of the Amazon version has several twists that are not explained, the British version explains all the twists and queues the audience for the next series.  Yeah, that's much better.  Definitely watch the British version and skip Amazon's pale remake.

Utopia

A young woman and her husband arrive at the house of her recently deceased grandfather.  It is immediately clear that grandpa was a hoarder.  However, among the junk are pages of a comic book called Utopia, which claims to be the sequel to Dystopia.  Though the wife suggests tossing it in the trash, the husband thinks it might be worth something.  Indeed, he gets some immediate feedback online.  Well, I guess this is something for ebay.  No?  Never heard of ebay?  You're going to rent a room at a hotel during a comicbook convention and have non-secret bids from a random set of convention attendees?  Okay.

On the other side of this are the fans, specifically a group of 5 fans who believe that Dystopia is not exactly fictional.  Yes, they are conspiracy theorists who believe Mr. Rabbit - the comic's villain - is an evil genius who plans to wipe out humanity with an engineered virus and that he is responsible for a variety of viral outbreaks around the world which are cleverly exposed in the pages of Dystopia.  With Utopia, they will be able to find out who Mr. Rabbit is and save the world!  Okay.

The hero of Utopia is Jessica Hyde, the daughter of a brilliant scientist who has been kidnapped by Mr. Rabbit.  Her goal is to rescue her father while avoiding the agents of Mr. Rabbit.  At the end of episode 1, she shows up.  So, there is indeed truth to the comic.  Oddly enough, when the conspiracy theorists meet her, they are skeptical.  Okay.

Though this is just an American version of a British show, it had the misfortune to premier during Covid-19 and some of the storyline is pretty creepy with that backdrop.  We have a villain who has intentionally spread a disease for which he has a 'vaccine.'  He wants everyone to take the vaccine.  Whenever his plot is on the ropes, he engineers some fake news.  Yes, he has an entire cadre of people who create false identities and histories for his agents, make certain stories trend on social media, and otherwise manipulate the populace.  At any other time, this might just be escapist but there is maybe a smidge too much verisimilitude here.

The 8th and final episode ends with cliffhangers for all the major characters, signaling a second season.  Not only are they cliffhangers, half of them are accompanied by a major plot twist.  With the ham-fisted way that the finale dealt with the vaccine, I don't have high hopes for the explanations for these twists.

Overall, it's not worth the effort.  I wouldn't have watched the whole thing except to write this review.  John Cusack and Rainn Wilson are the most noteworthy stars.  The background of the 'comic' that starts the ball rolling undermines the idea of a comic.  Who published Dystopia if it is just a bunch of art from a man stuck in an asylum?  When Utopia shows on the scene, it's as if everything is a mystery but there are all these fanboys who cosplay as the various characters.

Skip this one.