Series 2 Episode 1

The first episode of the second series of the British thriller-drama action, Utopia, was first broadcast on 14 July 2014. The episode was produced by Kudos Film and Television for Channel 4.

Synopsis
1974, England—Scientist Philip Carvel has a fateful meeting with a young woman, Milner, bonding over a shared ideology their influence on each other will lead to the creation of a virus–their solution to the world's overpopulation.

Plot
Following the assassination of ex-Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, a man plays with his daughter in Rome on March 20th, 1979, waiting for someone. He addresses her as Jessica, revealing him to be Philip Carvel. She is drawing a picture of her surrounded by human-animal hybrids when a suited man approaches Carvel, pointing him towards a car. He leaves Jessica with the man and gets in the backseat, where a woman hands him a document and asks if he knows what it is. She explains that it contains the identity of Mr. Rabbit, only to show a picture of her when she opens it, revealing her to be Milner. The document was sent to Italian journalist Mino Picorelli, sitting in the driver's seat, who Milner claims helped the Network pin Moro's murder on the CIA instead of them. Milner warns Carvel that she knows he sent the file, but is stopped from doing anything when he tells her he has finished Janus. He starts to explain that he has made "an adjustment" that renders it unusable, but is cut off when a Network agent shoots and kills Picorelli. Milner warns Carvel to give her Janus by the end of the week or she will have Jessica tortured, and leaves. Carvel stares at Picorelli's body in horror as Jessica plays with the Network agent in the background.

In 1974, Carvel dresses up and is interrupted by his wife Brosca, demanding to know what he has done to their toddler son Pietre that rendered him mute and unresponsive, believing it to be shock or trauma. When he asks if she is taking her medication, she begins to hit at him until he leaves. Carvel is taken by limousine to an upper class event, where he drinks and ridicules two scientists discussing curing malaria by exterminating mosquitos. He argues that "malaria's doing a great job" and is overheard by Milner, who is flippantly dismissed when she approaches him and praises his intellect. When she asks why he would not want to cure malaria, he rambles about his views on overpopulation and is intrigued to hear she agrees with him. Figuring the only way to help the human race is die, she balances on the edge of a railing in her heels and muses that she has been in a genocide before until Carvel stops her, saying he has an answer. He spends the night explaining it to an enraptured Milner and watches her leave, where she helps a visibly intoxicated man into a car.

Carvel and Brosca try to coax a reaction out of Pietre by offering him a rabbit to play with, but he remains silent, Carvel insisting that "he'll grow out of it." Now working for the Network, Carvel meets Milner's assistant and a group of scientists that are hired to work for him. Staying after work to eat with Milner, Carvel remarks how impressed he is at the scientists' qualifications, and yet they revere him, Milner noting that they see him as a god. He muses that despite the gravity of their work, "I feel separate," and asks if Milner feels it too. She remarks that he truly is a god. He explains the first version of Janus to Milner and her assistant and reveals he has isolated a race to leave fertile that he feels as the most genetically superior, shocking them. Milner asks if he could just have Janus randomize who it leaves potent, and he acknowledges that he could, but "why not choose?" Milner insists that that is not who they are. Carvel later takes Pietre out to a small research facility, feeds him drugged chocolate-covered raisins, and violently cuts a rabbit's throat in front of him.

Carvel and Brosca have dinner with Milner and her jovial but alcoholic husband, Tom. Carvel asks Milner if Tom knows what she does at work, and she tells him she still wants him to love her, so he does not. He later happens upon Milner and Tom becoming intimate where the former notices him and later has sex with Brosca. When he promises he has not hurt Pietre, she reveals that she is pregnant. A few months later, a now visibly pregnant Brosca visits Carvel while he works on Janus as Milner watches, irritated. She tells Carvel not to come to work the next day, as his men know too much and she is going to have them killed in a "gas leak." Horrified, Carvel insists they are good people and do not deserve to die, but Milner counters that he cannot let human attachment get in the way of saving the world. Brosca gives Pietre another rabbit to play with and is delighted when he begins to pet it. Bringing food to both of them when she leaves them alone for a bit, she finds that Pietre has killed it with his bare hands and eaten part of it. She cleans up the body and breaks open Carvel's desk drawer where she finds dozens of Pietre's macabre drawings, recurring themes in them being rabbits and doctors.

Carvel visits Milner at her place and instead encounters Tom, who is soon going to rehab. He notes that Milner loves Carvel, but not in the way she loves him. She loves Carvel's intellect, describing it as "brain love." Tom abruptly vomits as Milner returns, and she cleans him up while Carvel leaves. He returns home where he is arrested on suspicion of child abuse and is bailed out by Milner. He confesses to her that he experimented on Pietre in an attempt to inhibit violence in humans, but he has gone too far and does not know how to reverse the process. Milner is unconcerned, sure that he had his reasons, and is more worried about Brosca being a liability. Carvel deflects, insisting that Tom's alcoholism and Milner's support of him makes him more dangerous, and that the only person he loves in that way is her. He leaves and Milner returns home to find the house torn apart and Tom passed out. She puts him in a bath as her assistant enters, and she makes him talk in front of her and Tom. He explains that a Network scientist in Tel Aviv figured out what Janus does and is beginning to tell people in his facility, so Milner orders him to get them all on a plane and bomb it before drowning Tom for hearing too much.

Brosca dies giving birth to her daughter and Milner tells Carvel she was a necessary sacrifice to build "utopia." She lets him keep the girl on the grounds that he does not neglect his work, and he cuts her off mid-sentence by going to see his daughter when allowed. Enraptured with her, he names her Jessica and dotes on her endlessly, neglecting Pietre whenever the boy reaches out for him. Picking up where the opening left off, Carvel hugs Jessica tightly and removes her coat, where he takes out another copy of the file and mails it to someone.

A news report explains the multiple union strikes going on in Britain while Milner and her assistant meet in a warehouse, stuffed with full but unburied coffins because of the gravediggers' strike. The assistant informs her that Carvel sent the file to Holland ambassador Richard Sykes, likely in hopes of getting it passed along to Parliament member Airey Neave. When the exasperated assistant asks why Carvel keeps trying to expose her, Milner says he is scared of the finished Janus but cannot bear to destroy it, so he is choosing to destroy her instead. The assistant offers to have him killed, but Milner adamantly refuses. She asks him to show her something and he lifts up his shirt, showing her the Chinese character for "rabbit" carved into his chest. Milner tells him "your loyalty breaks my heart" and asks him to deal with Sykes. On March 22nd, Sykes and his footman, Karel Straub, are shot and killed in his car by two Network agents and the murders are blamed on the IRA. Milner and her assistant meet with Neave, who had received Carvel's document. He initially feigns ignorance, but soon turns smug and reveals he knows the Network killed Sykes. Milner asks what stops them from killing him too, and Neave remarks that he is much more important than Sykes, addressing her as both "Letan" and Mr. Rabbit. He asks them to prevent severely ill Parliament member Alfred Broughton from voting in an upcoming election, allowing Margaret Thatcher to become Prime Minister.

Carvel lives with his children in his lab on Three Mile Island, where he is met by Mr. Omida, a man sent by Milner to torture Jessica should he step out of line. He almost burns his research, but instead begins drawing The Utopia Experiments. Milner and her assistant meet with Broughton's doctor, Isherwood, explaining that they need Broughton to miss the vote or he will be assassinated. Enraged, Isherwood decries them as "crypto-fascists" and tries to get his gardener to call the police, and the assistant kills the man before he can. They leave Isherwood to make the choice.

On March 28th, 1979, Milner watches as Carvel is prepared to be tortured by Omida for not giving her Janus. Carvel repeats that he made an adjustment to it, but still refuses to disclose what it was despite Milner's begging. Omida removes one of his fingernails and Milner asks if Janus is in a picture of the god Janus made of numbers, but Carvel responds that he is ashamed of what he has done and terrified of Milner, knowing she will use Janus no matter what adjustments were made. The Three Mile Island reactor begins to melt down and Omida leaves to go torture Jessica. As the facility evacuates, Milner ventures deeper into it and kills a guard to get through. A man named Christos frees Carvel, and he removes a small vial of Janus from a hidden area before following Omida and stabbing him to death before he can torture Jessica. He injects Janus into her and carries her out of the facility with Christos. Pietre approaches him from across a hallway and reaches out for him, and Carvel leaves him behind. Newscasts report on the meltdown and Margaret Thatcher's popularity, before reporting of Neave's assassination by a car bomb on March 30th, blamed on the INLA.

Milner's assistant finds her in a destroyed hotel room, deeply distraught over losing Carvel rather than Janus. He realizes Milner had Neave killed and asks why they went along with his demand if they could have gotten rid of him from the start. She explains that to operate, the Network needs a government that stays in power. He shows her footage captured of Carvel and Jessica showing him injecting her with Janus, to Milner's shock. Christos has Carvel institutionalized under the name "Mark Dane", as he has become unstable and incoherent. He gets in his car where Jessica is waiting in the backseat and looks at her drawing from the opening, labeled by her as "Jessica hiden in the animals". He scribbles out the "n" in "hiden" and gives it back to her, addressing her as "Jessica Hide". Carvel works on The Utopia Experiments in his cell and glances at a noose made from the pages before getting back to work.

Cast

 * Philip Carvel - Tom Burke
 * Milner - Rose Leslie
 * Brosca Carvel - Anca Androne
 * The Assistant - Ed Birch
 * Tom - Trystan Gravelle
 * Airey Neave - Tim McInnerney
 * Mr. Omida - Kevin Trainor
 * Dr. Isherwood - Clive Wood
 * Christos - William Belchambers
 * Mino Picorelli - Vincenzo Ferrera
 * Young Jessica Hyde - Aine Garvey
 * Young Arby - Mason and Harley Rooney

Deaths

 * Aldo Moro
 * Mino Picorelli
 * Five scientists
 * Tom
 * At least fifty scientists
 * Brosca Carvel
 * Richard Sykes
 * Karel Straub
 * Martin
 * Three Mile Island facility guard
 * Mr. Omida
 * Airey Neave

Music

 * "Bambino Criminale" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Opening, news report on strikes, fleeing Three Mile Island/newscasts)
 * "Lucidity Gone" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Carvel arrives at the event, Carvel begins working for the Network)
 * "I Feel Separated" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Carvel explains his plan to Milner, Carvel in jail, killing Omida, Milner realizes Carvel put Janus in Jessica/Carvel is institutionalized)
 * "Arby's Oratorio" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Carvel kills a rabbit in front of his son)
 * "Fascinating Child" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Carvel watches Milner and Tom become intimate/Brosca reveals she is pregnant/Brosca visits Carvel at work)
 * "Bambino Illuminatus" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Pietre kills a rabbit/Brosca finds Pietre's drawings, Carvel meets Omida/Carvel begins drawing The Utopia Experiments, Carvel tells Milner he is scared of her)
 * "An Answer" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Milner drowns her husband)
 * "Meditative Chaos" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Carvel takes care of Jessica but neglects Pietre)
 * "Conspiracy Part 2" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Milner's assistant shows her the symbol on his chest/Richard Sykes' assassination)
 * "To You All Kids Will Come... (Metamorphosis Complete)" - Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Carvel works on The Utopia Experiments/Credits)