Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 26 August
Utopia (Sitch/Cilauro/Gleisner, 2014-2023)
On (almost) this day back in 2021, I was filling in for Simon Morris on RNZ At the Movies during one of those periods where cinemas were shut due to the coronavirus.
In that episode I reviewed one of the best television shows ever put to air which to that point had only been four seasons. There is now a fifth.
Utopia is produced by Working Dog Productions who have been a fixture in the Australian comedy scene for nearly 30 years, and responsible - if that's the right word - for the classic films The Castle and The Dish and the TV comedies Frontline and The Hollowmen.
Amazingly, the writing and directing team of Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro and Tom Gleisner with producer Jane Kennedy have been working together since the mid-80s when they formed the D-Generation breakfast radio team and on the evidence of Utopia they're still going strong.
Sitch plays Tony Woodford the much put-upon CEO of Australian federal government agency, the Nation Building Authority.
It's their job to cut through the red tape that prevents big infrastructure projects from happening, bypassing the Nimbys and getting buy-in from the stakeholders. That sort of thing.
But as is so often the case, their efforts are thwarted time and again by incompetence out of their control.
So, there's much gold to be mined from Australia's fairly inflated sense of its own importance and the self-interested politicians and political and media advisors derailing projects like fast trains or cross city tunnels or a second Sydney airport.
On another level, it's also like a family comedy - with Sitch in the role of the put-upon dad who never gets his way surrounded by wacky characters who won't do what they're told.
But at its heart it's a classic workplace comedy, getting much mileage out flaky wi-fi, office recycling, new security systems and the mysteries of HR.
Working Dog have been following much the same format for decades now. Utopia feels very like Frontline did in 1994 only it is honed to a razor-sharp edge now.
The pace is superb and the jokes come thick and fast, so much so that we will often be laughing from beginning to end - I don't make that claim lightly.
One reason for this is that the ABC has no commercials which means the rhythm of the show doesn't depend on those six-to-eight-minute arcs that constrain a lot of American situation comedy. And there's usually a solid main story as well as a secondary story in each episode which makes it more like Dad's Army - the high watermark for television comedy in my eyes - than something like Home Improvement.
For the last couple of months whenever we've felt like we needed a palate cleanser after a heavy drama or even a big day, we've gone to Utopia and haven't been disappointed.
Also in that 25 August edition of At the Movies: the Gerard Butler disaster movie Greenland; The Tomorrow War, a science-fiction film starring Chris Pratt as a former Green Beret sent 30 years into the future to fight off an alien invasion; and the documentary Max Richter’s Sleep about the composer’s eight and a half hour ‘lullaby’.
Where to watch Utopia
Aotearoa: Streaming on Netflix
Australia: Streaming on Netflix or Stan
Canada: Not currently available online
Ireland: Not currently available online
India: Not currently available online
USA: Not currently available online
UK: Not currently available online
Hilarious show and a bit like Veep* in that it feels like the same episode on repeat with only incidental changes in the story arc.
*another effective palate cleanser for us - this is potentially a topic with legs of its own
I couldn’t watch more than about five episodes. My experience in large government type places is small, but enough that it drove me insane with its accuracy.