Utopia and gratuitousness

Utopia

I have a telly aversion. There's always a whole, long list of other things I need to be doing. I watched the first series of Utopia almost back-to-back, start to finish. Not such a great feat. There's only six episodes.

As with most suspenseful and violent films and television, there's a lot of laughs along the way too.

I've caught up to episode four of the second series. After the first one uses documentary and news footage cut between the action to provide some context for the first series and for what's to come, the same cast as before continue the conspiracy theory story line. With more bad language, distressing and violent scenes, adult content, all that stuff the woman with the posh voice warns you about just before it kicks off, leaving you thinking “good...what's not to like about all that, then?”.


The nature of violence

All violence is senseless, needless, and gratuitous, isn't it?

I mean, I don't want to sound like Morrissey or nothin'...but...that's the case,'aint it?

I read some reviews of Utopia:

Ofcom got complaints from humourless, anally retentive folk as follows: violence, offensive language, and child actors being involved in scenes of adult content. Guys? There's the off switch, right there. Your remote's on the Bible, next to your chastity belt and barbed self-scourging kit.

Aidan Smith (The Scotsman) appreciated the astonishing visuals, as well as the astonishing violence. Astonishment is in-built to violence, Aidan. Love and marriage, sister and brother, they go together. Unastonishing violence don't exist.

Tom Sutcliffe (The Independent) like the great visual style but questioned whether the violence was really necessary. Why, Tom, of course it was justified. If it made just one of you question whether it was necessary, that's all the justification anyone could ever ask.

Sam Wollaston (The Guardian) raved about a work of brilliant imagination, a 21st Century nightmare that looks beautiful, but had problems with the gratuitousness of the violence.

Mark (good name, dude) Monahan (The Daily Telegraph) got it. He described it as a “dark, tantalisingly mysterious overture”.

Here's how it works: our great and good law-makers tell us that, no matter what, we must find a way to settle our differences other than taking it out to the pub car park for a set-to. That's against their laws. We must, without their resources, a huge paid diplomatic core, more experts than taxpayers can afford, come to an amicable settlement, or have our collars felt and risk a custodial. The great and the good, on the other hand, for centuries, have gone to war (or sent their minions to fight their wars) at the drop of a hat.

All violence is gratuitous. That's the point.

What Aidan, Sam, Tom and the anals didn't like, in all probability, was that the violence occurred and erupted without too much chat and preambles. As it would naturally occur. Nothing. Bang. Footsteps.