![]() ![]() The story, once it gets going, centers on a small band of fan girls and boys who are forced to go on the run because of their accidental connection to the comic book and are devoted, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, to decoding its mysteries. But it has some important, and off-putting, things in common with them: a nasty chilliness and a lack of empathy for its characters, who are blunt instruments Flynn uses to deliver shocks to the strapped-in audience. With a story that takes comic-book fetishism and the excesses of fan culture and embeds them in a high-body-count action-thriller, it’s a long way in subject matter from Flynn-related projects like “Gone Girl” and “Sharp Objects,” both adapted from her novels. I like this sort of thing quite a bit, but “Utopia,” which was developed and written by Gillian Flynn (after passing through the hands of David Fincher and HBO), never got me on board. Robot,” “The Prisoner,” certain Christopher Nolan movies - but if you like this sort of thing, here it is. (Seven episodes were available for review.) It’s a pale shadow of the genre’s exemplars - “Mr. ![]() “Utopia” is the latest example, and a fairly elaborate one, of the guessing game as an end in itself - pandemic, conspiracy and doomsday prepping are all fodder for a narrative puzzle that’s only beginning to come into focus as the season ends. Add in a disinformation conspiracy fed through social-media boiler rooms and an overall end-of-days atmosphere, and you have 2020 in an eight-episode nutshell.Įxcept that the series, which premiered Friday on Amazon Prime Video, isn’t exactly about any of those things. Angry mobs protest quarantine restrictions. A vaccine is being rushed into production. For a show that’s based on a 2013 British series, and has been in the works for years at different networks and with different writers attached, “Utopia” couldn’t feel - on the surface - much more timely.Ī deadly flu is hopping from one American city to another and the word pandemic is in common use. ![]()
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