Utopia - Season 1 - Review

A long-term reader of this blog will notice that TV shows generally get a short review per episode. Why then, you ask, does 'Utopia', the Channel 4 series from 2013, only get one review for the entire first series? The answer, is because I was so enthralled by this show that I watched the entire ~6 hour spectacle in one sitting.

Bright and bold, the title card reflects the punchy vibe of the show.

It's a show that I was aware of but had never had any compulsion to watch. This was probably because I'd only seen billboards for it, in which it looked interesting (I suspect if I'd seen a trailer for it I definitely would have stuck around to watch it, it's that striking) but not interesting enough to make me watch TV. I'm a college student, of course I don't watch TV. The concept of it did of course look interesting… whatever it was, so when I logged on to Netflix for the first time in several months and it was the top of my suggested watch-list I thought, why not, and that is basically the story of how I lost an entire day.

Medical Examination

I pulled down the stiff, wrought-iron door handle and dragged open the heavy, gloss-black-painted front door to West Street surgery. The building itself was a two story Victorian town house that had been converted into a general practitioners’ practice in the 60s. The door was four inches thick and had a strong hinge that required a hefty tug and left one slightly unbalanced after wrenching it open. I had an awkward altercation with someone trying to come out of the building as I was going in – I let them past, they let me past, I hesitated a little longer than them so they pushed past and gave me a little appreciative nod. A pointless gesture that wasted ten seconds of both of our lives.

Beyond the door, the reception desk was immediately off to the left and the waiting room was to the right up a flight of three stairs. Between these two destinations, in the opposite wall, was a door marked ‘private’, which presumably led around the corner to reception, next to which set into the wall was a small black plastic box similar to a letterbox, marked ‘repeat prescriptions’. I took a left.

The reception was a rectangular hole in the wall, three foot high by five foot wide, at hip height, so that I had to stoop slightly to look in. The bottom edge formed a desk with a computer, behind which was sat a lady in her fifties.

“Hi, I’ve got an appointment at four thirty”

The lady tapped at the computer keyboard for a few seconds.

“Name?” she requested, flatly.

“Jackson, um, John”

To the left of the desk was a corridor, running parallel to the front door, with two practice rooms, one of which I knew from past experience was where they administered holiday vaccines for tropical diseases. I flicked my eyes down the corridor to avoid the impression that I was staring at the reception lady, then looked back when she addressed me again.

“Yes, Doctor Fleischer’s a little behind today, take a seat.”

“Thank you.”

I turned as smoothly as I could and walked up the three steps into the waiting room. Five of the seats were occupied: a young, grizzly couple hissing back and forth at each other under their breaths; an elderly man who looked to be in impeccable health with a walking stick; a mother and her young child, who had rashes on his wrists. The waiting room had chairs lining the two opposite walls and half of the wall that had the door to the bathroom. I found a chair as removed as possible from everyone else to sit down – two chairs to the right of the mother, almost opposite the elderly man, with the couple in the farthest corner from me. This gave me a good view of the three steps leading back down to reception, from whence I had just come, and the three more steps leading further up into the rest of the building, where the majority of the practice rooms were.

Doctor Fleischer ended up being about forty minutes late, meaning I had to sit a while. During that time the couple were escorted down the stairs to one of the practice rooms by reception and the elderly man was called up the stairs. A couple more people came in to sit in the waiting room – a fat man who was entirely bald and sat down with a huff, and another elderly man – but I paid them little attention as I was sat waiting.

I also developed a headache that lasted about ten minutes and went away again.

“Mister Jackson?” a voice called from up the stairs, before a male head peeked around the corner to scan the waiting room for me.