Love tears them apart, and sets in motion the events that we are already familiar with: Petrie's blank homicidal tendencies Jessica's life on the run. It's played as a kind of folie a deux where Milner and Carvel effective believe they're the only people who can save the world – until Milner starts to realise that Carvel's scientific genius has pushed him over the edge, and he starts to lose trust in her. That her belief in Janus - a population control plot – is also framed as a warped love story between her and Carvel only makes her more human, even as its execution pushes her to more and more extraordinary acts. "We're saving a species" is her terrifying, brutal motto, a mission statement that runs through everything she does. It adds to Milner's unwavering sense of responsibility, not just to The Network, but to the world.
#UTOPIA SEASON 2 EPISODE 6 SERIES#
Carvel has respect for malaria Milner is committed to finding a solution for over-population.īy setting the series during the winter of discontent and then including other real-world details from a 10-day period in 1979 that saw the collapse of the Labour government, the Three Mile Island incident, the deaths of prominent members of the cabinet, and the assassination of Italian politician Aldo Moro – there's a real sense of impending doom, of a world about to collapse. Where the first series buried its dark ideas about population control behind the action, as the Utopia Experiments gang (Ian, Grant, Becky and Wilson Wilson) were thrown into a mind-boggling conspiracy plot now, we're getting to hear characters behind those plots discussing the issues. 'We are the disease'Īs with any great villain, the more you know about them, the more you can see their point of view, and with this exploration of Milner's past, there's a real sense of the show's focus also expanding to talk about the issues it has raised. They're all very enjoyable performances, with Ed Birch stepping in as a young version of James Fox's Assistant, and the younger versions of Jessica and Petrie, so as much as I wanted to know what was happening back in the "now" timeline, I couldn't help feeling like we could spend a lot more time here, or follow them through the 1980s. They're drawn together at an exclusive party (Utopia's version of a Bilderberg Conference?), where Milner recognises him as someone who might be able to help her. Right from the start, the casting felt spot-on – Rose Leslie is a convincing version of the younger Milner, falling in "brain love" with Philip Carvel (The Musketeers' Tom Burke) – a character we've heard so much about, but never met, like his daughter Jessica Hyde's introduction back at the end of the first episode. It's so much more than a prequel or a flashback – somehow it feels more like an extension of the whole Utopia universe, widening the parameters of the story to show us the motivations behind the madness we already have already been witness to.
It's like finding yourself ditched at a party with the one person you really don't want to spend any time with, and then realising that they're fascinating. The fact that we spend the whole of the first episode in the past, anchored only by versions of the big bad Milner, is unnerving once you realise that we're not going back to the future at any point. It's a disorientating, exhilarating experience, throwing the audience in at the deep end to refresh our senses and remind us how exciting Utopia is to watch. In a childhood filled with rabbits and raisins, there's young Petrie and Jessica, and in case you forgot it's Utopia – fingernails get the eyeball treatment. We see Milner starting out on her path to become Mr Rabbit, steeling herself to the violence she believes is necessary to save the world. A whole episode without any of the original cast, a period setting – swapping the yellows for reds, and even transmitting in a different aspect ratio … We finally meet Philip Carvel, the brilliant scientist behind the deadly Janus project, and later the author of The Utopia Experiments. Even for Utopia, which has never been afraid to push the boundaries or keep its audience guessing, this is a pretty bold way to return.
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