Utopia

Series one, episode two
Making an early claim to be 2013’s most unsettling drama, everything about ‘Utopia’ seems designed to disturb. The Network, a stone-faced cabal with its roots, we learn tonight, buried deep in the rivalries of the Cold War. Its operatives, with their propensity for ultraviolent punishment. And now the mysterious Jessica Hyde herself, breaking cover last week and now revealing herself to be something akin to a cyborg in deed and word (‘come with me now or you will all die,’ is inescapably redolent of Arnie in ‘Terminator 2’). Poor Ian, Becky and Wilson, meanwhile, are on the run with no clear destination, no more in the know than we are. That said, we do actually get a few answers tonight, yet not enough to mute the agreeable sense of nervous bafflement that pervades the show. Entirely gripping and more than a little ominous.