NP: Utopia

[Thomas Eckhardt]

> Cristobel's bouncy, cooing soundtrack is ESSENTIAL
> to the paranoid tone.

Its perfect. And hard to get out of one's head:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdS_VdblFtk

> That s2 pilot
> was ultra-harrowing...

...and finally explained what the political murders of Mino Pecorelli in 
Rome and Airey Neave in London had to do with the Three Mile Island 
accident and Labour's failure to win the vote of no confidence in the 
British Parliament by one vote which eventually lead to Margaret 
Thatcher becoming Prime Minister (all these historical events took place 
from March 20 to March 30, 1979). Kute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine_Pecorelli

(The first paragraph makes perfectly clear why Pecorelli's death is a 
staple of conspiracy lore.)

I quite like this take on Utopia which I just stumbled upon:

"So, with its unique and heady mixture of black humour and existential 
impotence could Utopia be the emblematic TV drama of the decade? Quite 
possibly. We live in the age of algorithm-driven consumerism, of 
capitalist realism, of state surveillance that's no longer hidden but 
seems almost entirely accepted anyway. We live in a world which has just 
reacted to an unprecedented crisis of capitalism by destroying essential 
public services in order to restore almost exactly the same system that 
caused the collapse. We live at a time when our knowledge of the extent 
to which our institutions are dysfunctional and corrupt is matched only 
by our disinclination to challenge them. And, as this series seems to be 
saying, the scariest thing is, that's by no means the worst of it. 
Utopia indeed."

http://thequietus.com/articles/15736-utopia-tv-preview
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l