Utopia (2020): D

I've only watched Episode 1 but I won't be continuing.

First problem is that nothing in this show feels genuine.

The acting itself feels artificial and then the characters actions, motivations, and dialog are unrealistic and contrived. For example: the protagonists are a group of people who have apparently been friends for a long time on a chat app. They decide to meet up in IRL for the first time at a convention. One guy excitedly confesses to a stranger that he's finally going to meet the girl he's in love with and he doesn't even know what she looks like. Then they do meet up and they inform each other of basic facts about their lives - job, living situation, etc. So many things wrong with this: 1) how could this group of good internet friends not know what each other looks like? 2) Why would the guy tell his story to a random dude he's standing next to? 3) If the guy and girl have been chatting and are in love with each other, how can they possibly not know each other's basic life details already?

As another example: a couple discovers a hitherto-unknown sequel to a cult-classic graphic novel. They go to a convention where everyone is nuts about this comic and receive purchase bids on the comic, one person at a time. People are bidding in the hundreds of dollars and everyone writes their name and bid amount down on the same sheet of paper. Then one person bids the "outrageous" amount of $20,000 cash to walk away with the prize. The couple and their 3 random friends start dancing in the room, drinking champagne, and waving wads of $20 bills around. Ungh... so many problems. 1) why would the couple not just publish the comic and make a ton of money from everyone? 2) If this comic is as hot as everyone seems to think, people would be bidding way more than hundreds of dollars. 3) The worst way to do bids is to have everyone write their name, room number, and bid down on the same sheet of paper. 4) The couple's group of five people is going nuts partying over $20k?! That's a nice chunk of change but not exactly life-altering. It's a year's rent, a modest car, or 10 new shirts for the Abester. It also nearly covers shipping my g-d essentials from the mainland to Hawaii.

SPOILERS
Second problem is that the show is a real downer that loves to show bad guys executing innocent people. So yeah, some bad guys are hunting down the comic. So they crash the champagne dolla dance party, get the list of bids which conveniently has the room numbers on it, and proceed to knock on every door and shoot every person in the head. After the third time I'm like OKAY WE GET IT but they keep going. After a few more I fast-forwarded. I checked just now: out of a 50-minute run time we literally spend 10 minutes of screen time - 20% - watching assassins kill innocent people. That's just not my thing.

Bottom line: Utopia is cheesy, dark, and dumb murder porn.