Published Mar 16, 2026, 11:01 AM EDT
Zach Moser is a Philadelphia native who loves films, television, books, and any and all media he can get his hands on. Zach has had articles published on satirical sites such as Points In Case, Slackjaw, and McSweeney's.
In 2020, Prime Video remade the British cult classic series, Utopia, but it may have been better off just buying the old show and reviving it. The 2013 Utopia is a British conspiracy thriller that follows a group of niche comic book fans who are certain the graphic novel, The Utopia Experiments, predicted several disastrous epidemics.
A group of these fans discovers an unpublished manuscript for a sequel, and when they get their hands on it, they enter into a world of secret organizations and conspiracies that threaten the entire world. The two-season Utopia has become a cult classic since its premiere, which may explain why Amazon thought a remake was a good idea.
Prime Video's Utopia Remake Was A Disaster
In 2020, Gillian Flynn, the author behind Gone Girl and Sharp Objects, and the writer for those subsequent adaptations, debuted her version of Utopia on Prime Video. The eight-episode first season of the show follows the beats of the English series for the most part, with a group of young fans discovering the comic book Utopia.
John Cusack leads a cast that includes Dan Byrd, Jessica Rothe, and Rainn Wilson. Strong actors can't save what turns out to be an unnecessary remake. Utopia was canceled after just one season, and there weren't too many fans to make a stir about. As of now, it has a 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The American series is oddly violent and cynical, which may sound like an odd charge to levy at a story about virus conspiracies. Utopia on Prime takes things to another level, and doesn't seem to have any reason for the heightened violence beyond not knowing where else the story could go.
Utopia also came out at a bad time, right as the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing. The politics of a series about a fake virus created by a shadowy organization that ultimately wants to infect people with a phony vaccine to control them is a little too unpalatable.
Prime Video's Utopia Could Have Revived The Canceled Original Series Instead
Instead of remaking Utopia, Prime Video could have revived the canceled original Utopia and brought it back to life. The series was produced in 2013, years before COVID, and the biological warfare part of the story is really just a placeholder for any world-changing event that sinister forces attempt to use for their own benefit.
Viruses didn't have to be the catastrophe in the original Utopia; it could have been any disaster. The remake, however, due to when it came out, makes the show about the virus, rather than the conspiracy that's the real heart of the show. The original Utopia understood this well.
It's strange in general to have a remake so soon after the original. The British Utopia came out in 2013, with its second season coming in 2014. That's only six years between the two shows. There's really not much more you can say about the story that wasn't already being told in the original Utopia.
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