'Utopia' review: This pandemic conspiracy drama does not engage meaningfully

Creator: Gillian Flynn

Starring: John Cusack, Christopher Denham, Sasha Lane

Score: 2.5

Conspiracy theories are like a part of the backbone of society. Even before the advent of the internet, people have long spread thoughts and ideas that they think is right even though they cannot provide any evidence other than "I feel it in me bones, laddie". So it's not a surprise that Amazon's Utopia took the idea of a conspiracy theory as its backdrop for storytelling but it really does need to iron things out.

Utopia is essentially a remake of a 2013 British TV drama of the same name with the same underlying plot: A group of nerds uncovers a conspiracy in the pages of a graphic novel, inadvertently marking themselves for death by a shadowy organisation with supposedly terrible goals of ending the world while the people demand some form of platitude for a pandemic that plagues them and their families, killing children like it's a small-scale repeat of the Black Death.

On paper, this adaptation had everything: A solid plot, engaging characters and a well-knitted web of lies were practically handed to it on a silver platter, yet somehow it...didn't just cut it, which is all the more weird because Dennis Kelly, the creator of the original series, wrote this adaptation.

There is little to be said about the plot, in terms of having a beginning, a middle and an end, because the show itself is rather confused about where it wants to take itself. Trying to be a suspenseful drama with action and sci-fi elements at the same time seems to have overwhelmed it somewhat, leading to the show taking two whole episodes to just pick up, and though it does get interesting, the conclusion (or rather, likely the beginning of something else) leaves much to be desired.

Perhaps the show's biggest problem is in its pacing. Utopia really feels like it is trying to accomplish a bigger goal for its characters but it tends to slow down to a snail's pace and pick up like a rabbit far too often for it to retain coherency, so much so that you may need to repeat some parts of episodes just to understand what is going on.

The cast, however, is one of the stronger choices this series has made. John Cusack's Kevin Christie is a proper gentleman, soft-spoken and calm, though as the series goes on, much of his nature and motivations are unravelled rather remarkably while Sasha Lane does well in making Jessica Hyde terribly unlikable at first in her quest to find Home and her father, but is almost sympathetic as she learns more and more about her sordid past. Much of the other cast is filled with the typical internet nerds or supposedly mad scientists, though they do grow up somewhat as the situation starts crumbling around them. The stand-out character, however, is Arby. Played expertly by Christopher Denham, he has just the right mix of sociopathic upbringing and a rather unsettling disregard for human life that it is almost more disturbing to behold than the actual plot of the show itself.

To close, Utopia is one of Amazon's less engaging efforts. It takes a material that was apparently much liked during its airing, and brings it down a few notches in terms of quality.