Utopia returns this July with a second series that promises to be stronger than the first.
Woven into Utopia series ones handsome game of chase was a genuine dilemma.
The human population is fast outgrowing the planets resources.
Can the inevitable be avoided, and at what cost?
The series two opener delves into that debate with characteristic daring and style.
As an hour of television, its violent, funny, often beautiful, and crammed with big ideas.
Fans of series one will not be disappointed.
Improving on the first series was the challengeUtopias creative team set themselves this time around.
Executive Producer Rebekah Wray Rogers told a recentBaftapreview screening audience Everyone decided that this series had to be better.
Director Marc Munden, at whose feet praise forUtopias unique look should go, is in agreement.
During the first series we were still trying to find it.
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Did writer Dennis Kelly share in the mass series two nervous breakdown?
Youre faced with the idea of finding new twists or just doing something a bit different.
Attempting not to repeat himself in series two was a preoccupation for Kelly.
What was difficult writing-wise was not to look back at what you did before and match it.
What Kelly has done in the new one is to expand upon the moral quandary of series one.
What was nice about this series is that it can be about that straight away.
That is what the entire series is about.
As well as being an eventful, captivating thriller,Utopias second series opener is an exercise in empathy.
Kelly argues that The Networks Janus plan sort of comes from a good place.
Theyre trying to solve the worlds problems.
Im not suggesting what they do is right, but they are coming from a good place.
If not The Networks solution to overpopulation, then what?
Kelly prompts us to ask.
I dont know what to do about it.
I think morality is flexible, Kelly told the Bafta audience.
All big proper questions arent easily answered by the moralities that we have.
I like the fact that it shifts and that it shifts for the characters.
Sometimes good people do terrible things, and bad people do terrible things.
Does Kelly think the violence is key to telling his darkly complex story?
Yes it is, is the unequivocal answer he gives to the Bafta crowd.
So I think you do need the violence to tell the extreme of that story.
Something else required to match the extremes of the story was an extreme visual style.
Fittingly for such a distinctive show, Mundens approach toUtopiawas to go against the norm.
We did that through an old Technicolor process.
More than the secondary colour correction though,Utopias landscapes were key to the series look.
Its mostly the framing and choice of aspect ratio which makes it distinctive.
Dont expect aUtopiacoach tour anytime soon though, the shows locations were, fittingly, built in a lab.
Everythings doctored says Wray-Rogers.
What you see before you isnt necessarily how it was.
Theres an awful lot of VFX and extra things added to shots to make them even more effective.
Munden adds, Theres a lot of invisible VFX.
There are a number of locations put together.
There are a lot of composite shots to give it a heightened feel.
The same goes forUtopias eerily atmospheric sound.
Thats not a bad description ofUtopiain fact.
Its stunning, shocking, darkly funny and undeniably quite mixed up.
Fans of the first run will have a blast with the second series.
And if Channel Four grants Dennis Kellys wishes, with the third and even the fourth.
You wont want to miss it.
Utopia series 2 starts on Channel 4 in July.
