Utopia (2014)

When the campers are just sitting around talking, about sex or God--or about each other behind their various radio-miked backs--they provide the gentle stimulation of coffee-shop eavesdropping.... When they argue, which they do, mostly over food and money or someone's self-professed expertise not being respected, it becomes tiring, like listening to the neighbors fight.

Even as Utopia promises to never, ever live up to its name, its funhouse-mirror reflections of the fault lines--religion, class, politics--in our own larger, obviously imperfect society make for fascinating TV, if only occasionally.

Fox executives could have saved substantial production costs and achieved basically the same boring result by filming 14 randy monkeys in a cage containing only 10 bananas.

While raw and weird have certainly yielded dividends in the past, please let’s not kid ourselves: If Utopia has any legs at all, it will as a cable-style freakshow, not some grand “experiment” in democracy.