Praise! Your! Fandoms! Get others interested!

[crantz]

Hey, everyone! It's Praise Your Fandom time!

Get people into your canon! Tell them what's awesome about it!

Tell them where to find it!

Tell them ALL ABOUT IT!

Please use this format:

<b>Fandom/Canon Name:</b>
<b>What's awesome about it:</b>
<b>Where to find:</b>


Thank you and have a great yuletide!


(ALSO: Please feel free to ask for specific recs too! Like post a thread going 'hey I'm looking for canons with bisexual leads' or something!)

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Utopia (Channel 4)

[lieu]

Fandom/Canon Name: Utopia (Channel 4 TV show)



What's awesome about it: Do any of the following appeal to you: global conspiracies revolving around hidden messages embedded in graphic novels? Ragtag groups of people forced into tenuous alliances with each other out of necessity? Meditations on personal morality in times of global crisis? Screwed up family dynamics? Sci-fi thrillers set in the real world? Cold war spy hijinks? Loyalty kink and identity shenanigans? Hyper-competent women? Beautiful music and audio-visual design (some selections from the soundtrack, worth a listen even if you don't think you'll ever watch the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6AdD4v4bH0)? Nathan Stewart-Jarrett being beautiful and morally compromised? Rose Leslie being beautiful and terrifying (see icon)? If you answered "yes" to any of the above, consider watching Utopia before sign-ups close!

In terms of style, I'd describe it as Black Mirror meets Tarantino with sides of the IT Crowd and Watchmen. A group of strangers meet on a forum for fans of an obscure comic book and find themselves pursued by relentless assassins. A mysterious woman comes to their aid, but her private agenda may be as terrifying as the alternative. Meanwhile, a bumbling civil servant (played by Jamie Mcdonald from The Thick of It, which is hilarious--this is his useless alternate universe self?) is drawn via blackmail into the sinuous web of an ominous pharmaceutical company. Vestiges of Cold War biowarfare development programs may be pulling strings inside world governments, causing many problems for our heroes. Over it all is the backdrop of impending global food shortages, and it all kind of gets worse from there. There's sexy scarification! Black comedy involving severed fingers! Really fun and colourful visual design! What more could you ask for?

There are two series with 6 episodes each, so it can be binge-watched in a day if you feel inclined. It was, unfortunately, cancelled two series into a planned four-series arc, but the second season finale wraps up many character arcs in a satisfying way, IMO, while also leaving lots of jumping-off points for fic writers to play around with. The rewatch value is very high.

It's hard to pitch this show because pretty much every episode involves a reveal or plot twist of some kind and a lot of its most tropey aspects are contingent on those plot elements. It's also hard to pitch this show because it's both thematically bleak and full of graphic violence. For what it's worth, the series premiere is probably the most concentrated in its depiction of violence, so if you can get through that you can probably make it through the rest. If you're the kind of person who enjoys that kind of thing, please, go forth!

Where to find: The unfortunate thing is that it's pretty hard to get a hold of legally, at least outside of the UK. No DVDs in North America, AFAIK, and I don't think it's on Hulu or Amazon Video. According to one of those international Netflix search engines, you can stream it on NF in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. You can also find download links... around. If you get my drift.