It’s topical yet timeless no wonder Utopia gets referenced every time a big infrastructure project looks set to syphon billions out of the national purse. Time and again we’re told that conflicting forces in society mean most issues will never be seriously tackled, and our government is much too interested in staying in government to govern in the public interest. It is a rock solid, 100% reliable formula for delivering jokes about how politics – both generally and in the office – is all about substance over spin. Good luck with that.įrameborder="0" allow="accelerometer autoplay clipboard-write encrypted-media gyroscope picture-in-picture web-share" allowfullscreen> Each week there’s an A plot where Tony tackles some big infrastructure issue that the audience is probably at least slightly aware of: in this season’s first episode he wants to know why a highway widening is running years behind schedule. Ironically for a sitcom that made a big splash early on for pointing out all the reasons why high-speed rail would never go away while simultaneously never being built, Utopia runs on rails. The much loved buddy we’re really here to see is bureaucratic bungling and media spin, and it’s like they never went away. It may be nice to have Tony (Rob Sitch) back being annoyed over the government’s refusal to listen to (his) common sense as head of the oversight body the Nation Building Authority, but he’s not exactly an old friend (do we even know if he’s married?).
If you’re lucky, they become old friends it’s nice to check in with we didn’t get five seasons of Rosehaven because it was cutting-edge satire.īut now Utopia is back for a fifth season, it’s clear it’s never been about the characters. Dramas might get stale over the long run, but the better you get to know sitcom characters they funnier they get – well, some of the time at least. The big advantage a long-running sitcom has over just about every other form of television is familiarity.
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