The
landscape is shifting and television production is evolving with it
STAYING IN REVIEWS TV and DVDs to enjoy from the comfort of your sofa STAYING IN
TV UTOPIA Channel 4, Mon 14 & Tue 15 Jul ●●●●●
David Fincher is currently working on an American adaptation of Utopia for HBO, and you can see exactly why Dennis Kelly’s thriller would appeal to the director of Se7en and Fight Club, with its mix of conspiracies within conspiracies, bleak comedy and graphic violence (including a particularly memorable scene involving a teaspoon and an eyeball). There’s no respite in Season Two, with someone’s brains blown out within the first five minutes. The second series deliberately
wrong-foots viewers by opening in Rome in 1979, then jumping back to London in 1974, a backdrop of strikes, blackouts and the three-day week (with close attention paid to period detail, from fashion to film stock). It’s the perfect breeding ground for the inception of the Janus Project, a drug which sterilises the majority of humanity to preserve the planet and combat the exponential population explosion. Series 2 delves into the background of Milner (here played by Rose Leslie of Game of Thrones), Jessica and her father (played by Tom Burke), who wrote the original graphic novel which everyone was chasing in the first season.
Episode two takes us back to the present day. Ian (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) is finding it difficult to readjust to normal life; The Network have Jessica (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) in custody while monosyllabic hitman Pietro (Neil Maskell) is called back into action. The bold use of intense, queasy colours makes Utopia an almost surreal experience. Dark, fierce, compelling and addictive, it’ll be intriguing to see how Fincher handles this very British mystery. (Henry Northmore)
DVD ADULT WORLD (Signature) ●●●●● DVD HAUNTER (Studio Canal) ●●●●●
announced they would be producing a sixth series of US sitcom Community after it was dropped by NBC. Amazon started producing their own programming in 2013, stepping in to save Ripper Street from the axe on BBC.
the ‘This is an exceptional opportunity to bring back Ripper Street for a third series by working with right partners,’ explained Ben Stephenson, the BBC’s controller of drama commissioning. ‘This deal gives fans another series of the show they love at excellent value to the licence fee payer.’ This new working model for the BBC will see episodes premiere on Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service then screen on the BBC a few months later.
The landscape is shifting and television production is evolving with it. Viewers are watching on tablets, phones and computers rather than gathering in the living room. Importantly, the networks no longer hold all the cards, which could be good news when your favourite TV show goes off air. If the fans demand it, there’s now a very real chance it could return from the cancellation graveyard.
The Killing Season 4 is available to stream via Netl ix on Fri 1 Aug.
Ignore the tacky cover art which suggests John Cusack is Emma Roberts’ favourite customer at a pole dancing club – the film contained within is a far more appealing comedy drama set on the fringes of the porn industry. In a bid for independence, aspiring writer Amy (Roberts) takes a job behind the counter at a sex shop. She moves in with sassy straight- talking transvestite Rubia (Armando Riesco) and obsesses over brooding local poet Rat Billings (Cusack) in a desperate bid to get published. It’s probably Roberts’ strongest performance yet, effortlessly engaging and charismatic. The requisite love interest, while a little rushed, is believable (less surprising when you consider Roberts’ American Horror Story co-star Evan Peters is her real-life boyfriend). Cusack, who seems to be drifting into the ‘where are they now’ file, brings suitable bile and melancholy to the vitriolic poet whose star has faded. It’s a bit self-consciously ‘indie’ but Adult World is a surprisingly charming story of friendship and connections amongst a group of loners, drop- outs and outsiders. (Henry Northmore)
There have been so many variations on the ghost story of late. Usually the one where the main character is already dead, à la The Sixth Sense, but we learn early doors in Haunter that Lisa (Abigail Breslin aka Little Miss Sunshine herself) and her family are caught in limbo, trapped in a monotonous loop living the same day over and over again. Cooped up in their home and shrouded in fog, only Lisa seems to be aware of this spooky Groundhog Day as voices try to contact her through the gloom.
Vincento Natali directed Cube and Splice with a real visual flair, but this is grey and dreary. Haunter brings nothing new to the table, peppering the runtime with a pick and mix of tired tropes (faces in mirrors, mysterious noises, etc). The structure means it is necessarily repetitive, even when Lisa purposefully starts trying to disrupt the routine and uncover a deeper mystery that echoes through the decades. Stephen McHattie makes a great villain but otherwise Haunter is just another exceedingly average entry in an already overcrowded genre. (Henry Northmore)
10 Jul–21 Aug 2014 THE LIST 49