Critic Reviews

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.

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.

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.