With the upcoming release of “cucumber, banana, tofu” the three new drama’s being produced by e4 and being HEAVILY marketed on thier adverts as being three interconnected series based on sex, love and relationships of every variety they could imagine I decided to give my opinions on the matter before the show comes out, mostly because they abandonned utopia which was a very interesting and entertaining series in the name of producing multiple “new drama’s” for thier network, which turned out to be this boring mass appeal soap drama mildly comedic droll.
For a network that frequently likes to remind people that the channel was “born risky” they have proven to be quite the opposite abandonning a psychological series following the misadventures of a guy who stumbled on a secret he shouldnt’ve and being drawn into the world of a series of psychologically disturbed misfits and how the interactions of these and the circumstances around them cause increased spiralling into a mental state of psychological disturbance themselves, all offset in a world of cheery pastal colours the series was very artistic and well written to capture the characters so well in a dystopian world with the aim of a utopian future all in a happy shaded world.
They have attempted to make this whole thing seem like a successor to utopia by having the pastal shades remain for the advertisements however it is clearly just mass appeal soapbox droll, guranateed to get the mindless masses to watch who enjoy soaps and the like, rather than anything truly well written and enjoyable this would be forgotten like every other drama of the same nature, where its only stepping stone above them is that it tries to cover every single denomonation of relationship and how the three series are supposed to be interconnected, but again this is hardly risky in a marketting standpoint stating that people have to watch all three drama’s in order to see the whole series because they’re connected. I would rather have shows such as utopia that are well written and have a good storyline rather than this mass appeal crap and I know I’m not the only one, shows that live on well beyond thier time rather than short instant satisfaction for base instincts. I understand there may have been other reasons to cancel utopia, in particular the associations between the ebola outbreak and russian flu, particularly how they are both highly contagious and have no cure (although suddenly and miraculousely ebola now has an experimental cure, and suddenly the most contagious disease outbreaks and the whole world has to send doctors to treat the incurable disease and then travel home infected, and spread the infection into first world populations the world over, and how terrorist attacks suddenly occur in the name of distracting from other issues in the world, and how suddenly muslims become a terror target because the world is made to fear them when any terrorist attacks are often the nature of individuals not an entire group or religion, but the fact that the “terror Expert” on fox news things birmingham in the uk is a terrorist hotspot should point out something, considering that it isn’t, the muslim community is no bigger here than anywhere else in the world, but people here have a voice against mistreatment of people and the downtrodden nature of society, people are looking for excuses to invade and blame terrorists should people dissappear.
On the other hand a show which hasn’t been as heavily advertised is cockroaches and this appears to be much in the same nature as plebs, but contrasting the whole roman era nature of that show this is instead set in a post apocalyptic future where the survivors of society have inevitibly become base instinct following morons due to radiation exposure and only the lead character and his family remain of an average level of intelligence due to surviving in the basement of his girlfriend during the attack which wiped out most of humanity. This looks like it could have potential and being designed as a comedy rather than a soapbox drama has much more appeal to me.
Hopefully e4 will catch on and bring back utopia and other good series rather than subverting thier own “born risky” nature, and actually deliver entertainment that is well written rather than whatever droll fills the mass appeal.