Geek Syndicate Issue 5 | Page 26

Geek Syndicate
den; Exec Prods: Karen Wilson, Jane Featherstone, Dennis Kelly; Prod Co: Kudos Film and Television. Sounds good? Well Geek Syndicate was lucky enough to be at the press screening of the first episode (which aired on 15th January 2013) and here’s what we thought. It is a cold Thursday afternoon and I’m here at the Soho Hotel with fellow Geek Syndicate reporter Montoya to see the screening of a new Channel 4 series called Utopia due out next year. Produced by Kudos Films (Law & Order: UK, Spooks, Life on Mars), Utopia is a six part new series written by Dennis Kelly (BBC 3’s Pulling and the Co-Creator of Matilda the musical). The series stars Nathan Stewart-Jarret (Misfits), Alexandra Roach (The Iron Lady), Oliver Woolford (Blackout) and Adeel Akhtar (Four Lions), Neil Maskell (Kill List), Paul Higgins (In The Loop), James Fox (A Passage to India), Geraldine James (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Simon MuBurney (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), Fiona O’Shaughnessy (Outcast) and Michael Smilley (Kill List). The series is about a small group of people who meet up on an internet forum about a graphic novel called The Utopia Experiments. The novel is about a scientist who has made a deal with the devil and it is supposed to have predicted the worst disasters of the last century. However the group are not the only ones interested in the manuscript, as “The Network” are also after it. The Network are a little like the Men in Black, government operatives who are happy to murder anyone who has knowledge of Utopia in order to keep it a secret. The strangers must therefore stand together to find out the truth about the Utopia manuscript and prevent themselves being next on The Network’s hit list.Initially Utopia seemed to take a little while to get into the story, even with a hum-dinger of an opening, but once the group eventually meet then it really seemed to come into its own.
Image © Kudos Films, 2012

With the series only being six parts, questions should be answered quickly with no drawing out the story. After the screening we were then treated to a Q&A session with Alexandra Roach, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Dennis Kelly, and Director Marc Munden whose credits include The Crimson Petal and The White. Alexandra and Nathan explained what drew them to the roles – both saying that they read all six scripts and decided that they had to do it! Dennis advised that Kudos initially came up with the idea of a conspiracy in a graphic novel, he added a “thriller element”, then wrote a story that focused on the “normal person” and how they deal with the situation that they are thrown into. Exploring what the characters are prepared to do and how far they are willing to go. When asked if there was any room to go past six parts, Dennis advised that whilst the initial series is a self contained story, they do have more to tell and have ideas about how to explore that further. Utopia is airing in the UK at the moment (Tuesdays at 22:00 on Channel 4) and I beg you to give it a try. This looks to be a new and intelligent series with no supernatural beings anywhere to be seen and is sure to keep us glued to our TV sets week after week.

Wendy Sims Christophe Montoya
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