UtopiaChannel 4, Tuesday, 15th an 10pm - 11:25pm
Repeat: Channel 4 +1 Tomorrow 11pm
Repeat: 4seven, Wed 16 Jan 12:05amYou know from the first scene that Channel 4’s new conspiracy thriller is strong stuff. We’re in a comic shop. Two strangers enter and start asking questions. Then they start gassing people. It’s blank and strange and it gives you the sense that we’re in a world where nobody is safe – just what you want in this sort of thing.
From there, we have to do our own jigsaw work with oddly shaped pieces of plot. Someone is blackmailing a civil servant, who prepares to take his own life. An 11-year-old boy eats a salad cream sandwich and sets about breaking into a car. An IT worker has a row with his boss. A student pitches to do a PhD on a legendary graphic novel... And that graphic novel is at the heart of this six-part series.
Some incredibly nasty men are after the manuscript, which contains dark secrets, and soon the members of an online forum devoted to it are sucked into real-world horrors.
The story is scripted cleverly and filmed with a kind of flat, haunting beauty. Oh, and Stephen Rea from The Shadow Line is in it, too. He only has about two lines to say, but he’s brilliant.
1/6. New series. Five members of an online forum agree to meet after gaining possession of the original manuscript for fabled graphic novel The Utopia Experiments. Unbeknown to them, a shadowy organisation known as the Network is in pursuit of the comic book and its agents are prepared to kill to secure the prize. Thriller, starring Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Alexandra Roach, Wilson Adeel Akhtar, Paul Higgins and Stephen Rea.
CastWilsonAdeel Akhtar
Assistant James Fox
Dugdale Paul Higgins
ArbyNeil Maskell
Jessica Hyde Fiona O'Shaughnessy
GeoffAlistair Petrie
LettsStephen Rea
BeckyAlexandra Roach
IanNathan Stewart-Jarrett
GrantOliver Woollford
GregOliver Dimsdale
JenRuth Gemmell
AnyaAnna Madeley
LeePaul Ready
ReynoldsMichael Smiley
BejanMark Stobbart
Det LeemanGary Cargill
Grants mumSarah Churm
RoyPaapa Essiedu
MarcusSimon Farnaby
DianeHermione Gulliford
TeenagerJoshua James
ClerkDanny Kirrane
BevEleanor Matsuura
JoeGerard Monaco
LawyerAndrew Readman
Milton Wilson Stewart Scudamore
Large man Gavin Spokes
Headteacher Dan TetsellCrew
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