ESCAPING FROM REALITY
Gillian Flynn's sharp series Utopia unfolds quickly, but the puzzles are easily solved
Utopia Amazon Prime
In the absence of trustworthy institutions and the constant simmering resentment pulsing through politics and culture alike, the concept of some vast conspiracy tying all the disparate threads together must be, in its own twisted way, a comfort.
When life feels particularly scattered, and faith in brighter days has dimmed, the idea that there are definitive answers out there just waiting to be discovered — no matter how wild they are — is all too tempting as an escape hatch from reality. But in Gillian Flynn's Utopia, the conspiracy theorists are the ones living in reality. Everyone else just trying to go about their lives is just biding their time before the cataclysmic end.
Thrillers have long gone to the story well of the truth hiding in plain sight, but Amazon Prime's Utopia makes it plainer still. After a disturbing comic called Dystopia appeared to anticipate several devastating pandemics, from SARS to Ebola and back again, a sequel called Utopia surfaces with the promise of predicting the catastrophic future, sparking an urgent hunt as a dangerous new flu spreads across the country.
With time running out, a group of rabid fans (Desmin Borges, Jessica Rothe, Dan Byrd, Ashleigh LaThrop and Javon “Wanna” Walton), a shadowy network called The Harvest, a possibly mad scientist (John Cusack) and the heroine of the comic herself (Sasha Lane) all end up racing to find and decode its pages as the body count around them steadily climbs. In Utopia, all governments and corporations are suspect; the only person you can trust is yourself, and even then, it's a leap of faith.
The season consists of eight energetic, propulsive episodes, each unfolding like a chapter of an addictive crime novel. Unlike many streaming dramas given as many minutes as they like to tell their plodding story, Utopia flies right by. But for a show that's essentially a series of puzzle boxes, its mysteries are all too easy to solve.
Still, the crowded, overlapping narratives give the actors some room to play. Cusack, for one,
has fun subverting his everyday nice guy vibes for Dr. Christie's benevolent billionaire act, even if that storyline is the series' weakest. Christopher Denham takes a purposefully flat character and finds every inch of humanity lurking therein.
As the enigmatic Jessica Hyde, Lane tears into her character's laser-focused mission with ferocious precision. And Byrd and LaThrop, bringing something resembling normalcy to the table, are even downright charming.
In modifying Dennis Kelly's original U.K. drama to fit an American mindset, Flynn, who wrote every episode, expands upon a few key themes: an intrinsic distrust of the government, slashes of shocking violence, and her characters' deep-seated longing to be heroes — or at the very least, to have a greater purpose.
These represent sharp enough instincts that it's a bit of a shame when Utopia spends so much time down the rabbit hole where the conspiracies are accepted as facts. The moments when the show draws a line between this underground and the banalities of everyday life are smart and chilling on their own.