Good news for Utopia’s writers, bad news for everyone else. Past episodes made a point of getting to the truth behind the spin season five’s first episode ends on a note that suggests those putting out the spin have gotten so good even Tony can’t uncover the truth. The system never changes and if anything, it’s getting worse. The only serious flaw here could be that after five remarkably consistent seasons it’s all been said before. Despite the sense of futility that underlies Utopia, for the most part they manage to highlight the underlying flaws in our system without getting overtly political, making sure the comedy comes first even when the moral is ‘maybe this woke business is getting a little out of hand’. While there’s a big risk with this material of slipping into ‘old man yells at cloud’ territory – and there have been occasional episodes in the past where the targets have seemed a little ill-chosen – producers Working Dog know their stuff. Read: What to watch in June: new to streaming, cinemas and film festivals near you It’s topical yet timeless no wonder Utopia gets referenced every time a big infrastructure project looks set to syphon billions out of the national purse. Time and again we’re told that conflicting forces in society mean most issues will never be seriously tackled, and our government is much too interested in staying in government to govern in the public interest. Their mission is to negotiate with a Flemish commission organized by Charles, the King of Castile, concerning the English wool trade. It is a rock solid, 100% reliable formula for delivering jokes about how politics – both generally and in the office – is all about substance over spin. Summary Analysis Thomas More the character sets the stage for Utopia by recounting how he was sent by King Henry VIII of England as an ambassador to the Netherlands, along with several other excellent men. Good luck with that.įrameborder="0" allow="accelerometer autoplay clipboard-write encrypted-media gyroscope picture-in-picture web-share" allowfullscreen> Each week there’s an A plot where Tony tackles some big infrastructure issue that the audience is probably at least slightly aware of: in this season’s first episode he wants to know why a highway widening is running years behind schedule. Ironically for a sitcom that made a big splash early on for pointing out all the reasons why high-speed rail would never go away while simultaneously never being built, Utopia runs on rails. The much loved buddy we’re really here to see is bureaucratic bungling and media spin, and it’s like they never went away. It may be nice to have Tony (Rob Sitch) back being annoyed over the government’s refusal to listen to (his) common sense as head of the oversight body the Nation Building Authority, but he’s not exactly an old friend (do we even know if he’s married?). If you’re lucky, they become old friends it’s nice to check in with we didn’t get five seasons of Rosehaven because it was cutting-edge satire.īut now Utopia is back for a fifth season, it’s clear it’s never been about the characters. Dramas might get stale over the long run, but the better you get to know sitcom characters they funnier they get – well, some of the time at least. The big advantage a long-running sitcom has over just about every other form of television is familiarity.
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