This Utopia remake looks kind of bad

The case for and against US remakes of classic TV shows ...

If you were to ask me what my favourite ever television show is, depending on the day I’d probably give you a different reply. Mondays might be Breaking Bad. On Tuesdays I might be feeling The Sopranos. On Wednesdays I’d probably opt for The Wire. On Thursdays I might have just watched Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, so it’d be that.

And so on. There are a lot of TV shows out there. It’s hard to pick a fave.

But if you asked me that same question at 2am on a dark and stormy Sunday, you’d get a different answer, one which is probably closer to the truth. The real answer is that my favourite ever television show is one many haven’t heard of, let alone seen.

It’s Utopia. I’m not talking about this lame 2014 American reality show of the same name that threw 15 fame-hungry Americans into a chicken coop to live together for a year, then had to cancel it after just a few weeks because of terrible ratings.

I’m talking about Dennis Kelly’s ultra-violent and utterly compelling UK comic book caper that ran for two six-episode seasons between 2013-2014 before being brutally cancelled, ending the show before he had a chance to finish its story.

If you haven’t seen Utopia, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it’s one of the most gleefully sadistic, colourfully original and utterly bleak shows you can imagine. There are dodgy hitmen and school shootings and eyeball torture sequences and someone dancing in a rabbit costume and this brilliantly bouncy carnival soundtrack that’s SO FREAKING CREEPY and still sends shivers down my spine.

Nothing competes. It’s insane. I’ve seen it something like five times. I can’t get sick of it. Every show I watch now fails to measure up. It’s, like, perfect.

If you’re still on the fence, watch the opening clip. If you can handle that, track it down (which can be tough - it’s no longer on NEON) and go for it, cos it’s utterly addictive and mesmerising.

Utopia’s one of those shows that demands obsession. I certainly had a moment with it. In 2017, pining for a conclusion, I used my journalistic know-how (basically, I sent an email) to score an interview with Kelly so I could ask him: ‘What the hell happened?’

A lot, as it turned out. Utopia was basically too bleak for TV. It covers themes that even in these Covid-19 plagued, global warming-ravaged times no one wants to talk about: overpopulation. There’s too freaking many of us. The show offers a controversial solution for that.

As Kelly told me: "When resources become scarce, we do strange things. We elect Donald Trump, or Britain votes Brexit. When we're squeezed, we get extremer, we get harder, we get scarier. What's coming up in the future is a period of squeezing unless we find a solution."

As for all that violence, Kelly defended it like this: "I don't understand people that complain that violence is shocking because, to me, violence that isn't shocking is appalling. Violence is always shocking. If we're going to represent it on television or on screen, it should shock us, because it's an appalling thing.”

It was a great interview, full of great answers. Kelly’s a thoughtful and provocative person, someone who hasn’t made a lot of television and isn’t an industry bigwig but managed to make an absolutely stunning show. It ended up being one of my favourite ever stories to write. No one read it at the time, but if you want to find it, it’s still online.

Anyway, Kelly told me that he received a lot of love from others in the industry for Utopia. He’d go to TV exec-filled dinner parties and find they’d shared dodgy downloads and bootleg DVDs of his show with each other. They raved about it. They wanted to know what happened. They loved it too.

You know who else loved it? David Fincher. The Fight Club director was working on an HBO remake for years. Kelly told me he’d read Fincher’s scripts, and it seemed great. He was excited. I was excited. Then the remake came unstuck. Fincher exited the project over budget issues.

But this story doesn’t end there. Amazon Prime picked it up. Gillian Flynn is involved. John Cusack and Rainn Wilson are starring in the thing. Last week, the trailer came out, and, um, well, just watch it ...

Look, US remakes of British shows can go two ways. They can be The Inbetweeners (sorry, Taika), or they can be The Office. In other words, sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. I want this to work. I really do. I hope Flynn makes Utopia fly, that they nail the music and characters and weird vibe and breathless hitmen and controversial tone

Most of all, I hope the US remake gets a chance to finish Kelly’s story. This trailer, sadly, doesn’t suggest it will.