21st Century Discoveries is a feature dedicated to exploring great, underseen and/or underappreciated films released since 2000. The goal is to help readers discover new, challenging and exciting films from around the world worth seeking out.

For my second entry into this feature, I’m breaking my own rules. I’m focusing on a TV show instead of a film. But I might as well go against conventions with something so unconventional and cinematic. For those currently residing in the US, this might be the best show on TV you’ve never heard of. Read on to see why Utopia is such a fantastic series. And if you’re from the UK, or have region free capabilities, you can buy Series 1 on Blu-ray.

Before you begin reading, please take the time (if you can) to watch the opening scene of Utopia. Intrigued? Horrified? Read on to find out more.

Utopia‘s opening frames immediately establish it as a show unlike anything else on television. The show, created by Dennis Kelly and airing in the UK on Channel 4, shoots in 2.35:1. This isn’t the first time television played with aspect ratios beyond 16×9; comedies often experiment with changing their framing, like Chris Morris’ Jam or, more recently, Key & Peele. Sketch shows tend to get away with it because a sketch can operate as its own short film. Utopia is one of the only dramas to film entirely in Scope (exceptions: Borgen shot in 2.2:1, and House of Cards films in 2:1, a sort of happy middle ground between 16×9 and Scope).

And with the recent renaissance of television, one making people wonder how the line between film and television has all but vanished, Utopia might be the most cinematic show on television. It doesn’t boil down to just the use of a wider aspect ratio either. The set design, compositions, use of colour and sound all have a quality to them that’s so offbeat and original in its execution it feels so out of step with current TV trends. I can safely say Utopia is a TV show where, if someone played it in cinemas, I wouldn’t notice it was made for television.

But let’s get to the meat of the show before delving further into its aesthetic pleasures. Utopia opens with two men, Arby (Neil Maskell) and Lee (Paul Ready) walking into a comic book store and murder everyone inside. They’re looking for two things: a woman named Jessica Hyde (“Where is Jessica Hyde?” became the show’s catchphrase last year), and a manuscript for the sequel to graphic novel The Utopia Experiments. In the show’s universe the comic has a cult following, with people claiming its drawings have prophecies and secrets hidden within them. The author, Philip Carvel, was a paranoid schizophrenic who wrote the book while locked up in an insane asylum. He killed himself before finishing the sequel, and now a manuscript of his second book has turned up.

That manuscript is now in the hands of four obsessive fans of The Utopia Experiments: Becky (Alexandra Roach), a medicine student suffering from a rare, degenerative disease; Ian (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), a lowly IT consultant; Wilson (Adeel Akhtar), a paranoid conspiracy theorist; and Grant (Oliver Woollford), a young and deceptively smart pre-teen. They find out the hard way that The Utopia Experiments actually does have secrets hidden within its pages, as Arby and Lee come hunting for them. Philip Carvel was involved with a vast conspiracy called The Network before losing his mind, and the pages of his manuscript contain vital information that will help The Network pull off their massive, decades in the making project.

While Becky, Ian, Wilson and Grant’s run for their lives to avoid getting murdered by The Network, Utopia also focuses on an entirely different storyline. Government worker Michael Dugdale (Paul Higgins) gets sucked into the conspiracy when he`s blackmailed into complete a mission for them. Both storylines in the show end up combining to provide a complete picture of The Network and its sinister intentions. The four characters on the run provide a bottom-up view, while Dugdale offers a glimpse into the higher levels of the conspiracy.

What distinguishes Utopia from other TV shows is its tone. The world of Utopia is one of death and brutality. Early on in the series one character says “There are no sides. Just people who help you and people who don’t.” The show quickly establishes that, whether you help or not, you’re most likely going to end up killed. Think of the show’s universe as a Cormac McCarthy novel filtered through a pop art lens. For The Network, their secretive project is so vital to them they would be willing to do anything in order to ensure its success. For everyone trying to escape their clutches, the only way to ensure their own safety is to silence anyone with the ability to threaten their chances of survival. It’s the ends justifying the means taken to an extreme level, and Utopia goes out of its way to show nothing is off-limits. Spoilers: the opening to episode 3, while a great example of what the show excels at, caused controversy in the UK considering it aired just over a month after Sandy Hook.

Don’t think Utopia is nothing but bleakness, though. The show juxtaposes its horrific nature with stunning visuals, employing a hyperrealistic look. Colours are oversaturated to the point where they vibrantly pop off the screen; colours and framing are deliberately made to resemble comic book panels. Cinematographer Ole Bratt Birkeland consistently provides some of the best visuals on TV right now. Director Marc Munden, handling the series’ first three episodes (Wayne Che Yip & Alex Garcia Lopez handle the other three), directs on a level that feels unprecedented compared to TV’s top prestige shows. Every shot looks coloured in by hand, and the exaggerative style offsets the dark, brutal content shown every week. The show also manages to be quite funny too. Dennis Kelly has one hell of a twisted sense of humour, and there are plenty of moments in Utopia that inspire a lot of inappropriate laughter. It all combines together to form a truly bizarre, singular viewing experience.

What really cements the unsettling atmosphere of the show is Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s score. The composer was given free rein to come up with a sound for the program, and his results are completely off the wall. In an interview de Veer said he used human bones as instruments during his recording sessions because of Utopia‘s level of death and violence in the story. He also used a trutrukra he played in the subway and a dried piece of rhino feces as instruments. It’s a wildly experimental score, and the usage of warped vocal samples throughout, especially the sounds of people breathing, make it the most unforgettable part of the series.

With television undergoing a sort of transitional period, Utopia feels exciting because it explores an area TV dramas haven’t really touched on yet: experimentation. The cinematic visuals and unorthodox score give off the impression of Channel 4 allowing complete creative control and commitment to the makers of Utopia. The show, whose second series is being unceremoniously dumped by Channel 4 right now, already has one major fan. David Fincher is teaming with HBO to adapt Utopia for US audiences. Hopefully Fincher will fight for the distinctive qualities of Dennis Kelly’s work, since it’d be hard to imagine Utopia having the same impact if it doesn’t shoot in Scope. One major downside of Fincher’s adaptation is that US audiences probably won’t get a chance to see one of the best shows currently on TV. It’s hard to tell what the future of television will hold, but a show like Utopia makes it feel like the future is already here.

Rubber Soul

Rubber Soul reenacts two in-depth interviews of John Lennon that were conducted ten years apart from each other. No words of Lennon’s were altered during this reconstruction, though the film does jump between the two interviews, sometimes revealing contradictory statements made from the former Beatle. In one interview, Lennon states how he and Paul McCartney rarely ever wrote songs together, but in the other he recants by saying that two did in fact do writing together.

Most of the film consists of Lennon going on long rants about The Beatles. A few of the antidotes are noteworthy, however, the majority of these interviews end up being more of a meaningless ramble. Die-hard Lennon fans will obviously get the most out of Rubber Soul, but strictly Beatles fans may not gain much more insight than what is already widely known. At one point Lennon acknowledges that all artists are egotistical, the film reveals that he might be the biggest of both.

RATING: 5.8

Ping Pong Summer

It would be very inquisitive to see what the reactions are to Ping Pong Summer from people who are unfamiliar with the pop culture of 1980’s–since the film is filled to the brim with 80s slang, grainy and desaturated picture, cheesy crossfades, perms, bright neon colored clothing, and unnecessarily gigantic boomboxes. Those who know that a suicide drink is a mix of all the available flavors will have a totally rad time with the film, and those who never used a cassette tape will likely be very confused.

Ping Pong Summer is a family vacation movie where an awkward teenager travels with his middle-class family to a beach town where he instantly falls in love with a cute girl while making enemies with a rich preppy bully. The central conflict in the film centers on the game of ping pong, when a challenge is made between the sworn enemies to see who rightfully gets the territory of the table and winning the heart of the girl. Ping Pong Summer uses just about every cinematic 80s cliché in the book, purposely making the plotline and outcomes very familiar. It is an approach that ultimately works, even if it does lay it on a bit thick.

RATING: 7.4

Open Windows

By now people familiar with the work of director Nacho Vigalondo’s should expect an edgy high-concept story is in store, and that’s exactly what Open Windows delivers, and then some. The film hits the ground running from the start when an obsessed fanboy (Elijah Wood) wins a contest to have dinner with his fixation, actress Jill Goddard (Sasha Grey). While eagerly waiting in his hotel room to meet the actress, news that the contest has suddenly been cancelled is brought to his attention by a mysterious man (Neil Maskell). But the man has something for him far better than a dinner date, camera surveillance of her from every angle and complete access to her phone.

Undeniably impressive is the fact that almost the entire film is shown on a computer screen that simulates a webcam feed between all of the characters. While Vigalondo does take some liberties with how technology operates, the overall concept of how easy it is to be tracked and watched online is very real. If anything Open Windows is an exploitation of technology, specifically internet surveillance. This is an incredibly fast paced thriller that contains so many plot twists that a second or third viewing will not only be required, but also preferred. Some are saying Open Windows is a 21st century Rear Window, a comparison that I would agree is rather reasonable.

RATING: 8

Rowan Athale attempts to breathe some new life into the heist genre by peppering it with dry British humor, stylized visuals, pulsing soundtrack, and characters with realistic motivations, but Wasteland overcomplicates the story with all of its gimmicky deceptions, leaving you feeling like the one being robbed. The film demands way too much faith from its audience to believe in all of the events that conveniently fall into place during the elaborate heist. Wasteland may have tried too hard to alter the genre formula instead of improving upon it.

The situation does not look promising for Harvey Miller (Luke Treadaway), a man who has only been out of prison for a few weeks but now finds himself back in a police interrogation room. His face looks as if he just stepped out of a boxing match with a heavy-weight champ, but detective Inspector West (Timothy Spall) suggests that the other man in the fight got the worse end of the deal. Harvey indicates that it may take the entire night to explain the whole story, the detective settles in—as does the audience. Harvey remains remarkably calm and even as he begins to recall the elaborate crime, a smug look on his face never leaves.

Through the use of flashbacks it is revealed that Harvey was framed for the prison time he just served by a local drug kingpin named Steven Roper (Neil Maskell) after stealing his girlfriend (Vanessa Kirby). While doing the time for a crime he did not commit, Harvey came up with a plan to get revenge on Roper as soon as he was released from prison. Now with the help of his friends Harvey carefully blueprints the heist that involves stealing ₤60,000 from the club that Roper owns. Harvey details all the intricate steps of the heist down to the smallest of details. After explaining how to always be one-step ahead of everyone he claims that the execution of the heist went wrong, which is why he is currently across the table from the detective—an ending to a story that is so implausible that it fools nobody.

Wasteland ends up going from fairly convincing to absolutely preposterous in its final 30 minutes, where the anticipated twists and turns continue until your eyes are sore from rolling. Because most bank heist thrillers nowadays throw in a few gotchas along the way, you come into the film expecting some purposely left out details. But what makes for a successful plot twist film such as The Usual Suspects, an obvious influence, is that the twist is within reach and right under your nose the entire time. The plot twists in Wasteland are so far-fetched that it is impossible to even guess at them—taking away all of the fun.

You certainly cannot discredit the effort that Athale puts into Wasteland, particularly with the film’s visual flair and complicated storyline. Granted, the script is over-written and the attempt to get you to empathize with its characters is a failure. But at least the film comes out swinging for the fences, even if the result is merely a base hit. Athale shows his ability as a director in this debut, but perhaps different source material would generate better results.

Wasteland trailer:

To start out I should state that I have not seen the original cult classic that Pusher is remade from. Therefore, I am not able to answer the age-old question as to whether or not it stands up to or exceeds the original film, which is rarely the case anyways. So this means I must just take this remake at face value and evaluate it accordingly.

Pusher begins with a drug dealer named Frank (Richard Coyle) who gets into heated debate when a client disagrees with how much the cocaine is going to cost him. Right off the bat Frank comes off as a man that you do not want to get into a fight with. This rings true a few scenes later when Frank’s immature younger side-kick Tony (Bronson Webb) gets into a fight of a dance club that Frank has to bail him out of by beating up three guys at once.

Later on that night Tony winds up talking to a man named Marlon who wants to buy a large amount of cocaine from Frank. He is able to get the amount requested from his boss who is a bit apprehensive about getting that amount so soon but does. It is made very clear to Frank that the money must be delivered straight after the deal has been made.

Frank meets up with Marlon just as the two discussed and everything is going smoothly until out of nowhere police cars surround them. Immediately Frank is on the run being chased by two officers. He manages to find a lake to jump into and dumps the cocaine into the water before being captured. Even though he may have escaped the police he now owes his boss a lot of money that he has nothing to show for.

The biggest issue is I had with the film is that it did not feel complete. Characters are brought into the story and leave twice as fast. The plot is simple and while it does not deviate much from it, there are many paths we are taken down that go nowhere. I probably enjoyed the ending the most but even that seemed incomplete. However, that makes sense considering sequels were eventually made of the first one.

Richard Coyle does a good job here as a convincing drug dealer who is both tough and stubborn. His character, however, was majorly flawed. There were many moments in the film where his sense of urgency was completely gone even though his life was on the line. It is hard to care for a character that does not seem to care about himself. Frank’s side-kick Tony was even worse of a character. His only purpose seemed to be for brief comedy relief.

Two areas that Pusher succeeded in the most were the visuals and the soundtrack. The latter is not surprising considering the film was originally done by Nicolas Winding Refn, who also served as an executive producer in this remake. I believe Refn’s Drive had the best soundtrack (despite the rest of the film) of last year. The only caveat with this is that the film relies too heavily on these which results in more dance clubs and drug induced parties than there really needed to be.

Pusher is an arthouse take on an otherwise fairly standard drug lord action film that only occasionally works. Luis Prieto’s Pusher felt like it was aiming for a raw and edgy feel (like I am told Refn’s version was) but it felt almost too polished and put together. It is hard to fault a remake for not taking chances and poor character development but it does beg the question, was a remake really necessary?