#utopia bbc

[snepperpack]

Part III - ✨Pready edition✨

Kevin and Lee are the two most diametrically opposed guys you could smush into the same post. The worst part of drawing Lee is that I am robbed of Paul Ready’s lovely curly hair

Whether it’s weird eyeball shit or whatever psychosexual anxiety you can hide with a bike helmet and a tote bag I will always draw Paul Ready being his strange sweet little self. Motherland is hilarious and makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Utopia is solidly okay but makes up for that with stunning cinematography and the best OST I’ve heard all year.

Part I | Part II

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

idk if you're alive utopia fandom but i found this pic that i made back in fucking 2015😭

[somethingintheforest]

My favourite genre of fanfic are ones set in London written by someone who has obviously never ever set foot in London. They write a utopia where the main characters all have cars which they park right outside their central London houses. They simply hop in and drive to their destination and are there in no time. Gridlock whomst? She does not exist in these wonderful worlds.

[emptyanddark]

i miss u darling

[senorboombastic]

Listen to the sixth episode of ’60 Minutes or less’, the new podcast from Birthday Cake For Breakfast – featuring Steve Davis of The Utopia Strong!

Words: Andy Hughes Finally – a world class athlete on ’60 Minutes or less’, the new podcast from Birthday Cake For Breakfast! For our sixth episode, we welcome royalty – the only guest thus far with an OBE, former world number one in snooker, Steve Davis. Amassing 71 major titles over his playing career, Davis remains one of the world’s best-known snooker players. Not content with such a…

[mmmmalo]

I'm reading one of the textbooks for my hip-hop media class, called "Prophet of the Hood." It analyzes the political and literary art form of hip-hop (It's extremely insightful, and I recommend it).

In the chapter, “B-boys, Players, and Preacher,” Imani (the author) breaks down black hyper-masculinity and white American's contemporary media “obsessions with the size of black male genitalia show us that an earlier era’s paranoid fixation on black male sexuality and the fear of black humanity” (Imani 120). It made me think back to how you explore Homestuck’s anti-black imagery in Slurquest.

Spectically, Gamzee serves as its manifestation (or at least Karkat's manifested envy for Blackness). Homestuck's BBC obsession can be applied to Gamzee’s Codpiece from reactions of ridicule, aggression, and sexual fixation.

Like one of the Myststuck with Jane; if you click on Gamzee’s codpiece, she becomes transfixed by it and expresses her inability to look away (4827). Karkat and Dave's conversation centers around it for a bit, to laugh at the sheer absurdity and joke about gamzee sexually defiling the Utopia.

KARKAT: I DON'T KNOW!

KARKAT: I DON'T THINK EVEN HE KNOWS.

KARKAT: MAYBE TO MAKE A "GOOD IMPRESSION" ON HIS FAKE ASS RELIGIOUS IDOL, AFTER HE THRUSTS HIS SACRED COD PIECE THROUGH THE GATES OF SHANGRI LA.

DAVE: ahahaha the best thing we ever do together is slam this assholes dumb religion (5937)

I apologize for the length and quality, and I'm wondering about your opinion on this? Or if you have made previous posts regarding the subject? I’m still new to exploring your blog.

This racialized reading of the cod piece def works in the Epilogues, where trolls face discrimination and Gamzee plays the stud to Jake's cuck under the cover of blackrom... But I needed some time to assess whether race is central to the codpiece's symbolic function in Homestuck proper. I think I basically agree, though I have some qualifiers

1 - To your point, the Myststuck appearance is sandwiched between two anxious fantasies of phallic inferiority: Hussie's empty wand/pistol losing to Lord English's staff/AK-47 (declaring magic fake is here a sour grapes expression of the loser's impotence) and Tavros remarking that he "attacked [Vriska] with [his] bogus self-esteem... and paid the ultimate price." No clear racial polarity in the latter encounter, but the first could pose Hussie's whiteness against the blackness of LE's pimp/pharaoh affectations. I also think that scene might reference Drop It Like It’s Hot lyrics? But anyway, these being on either side of the Gamzee's appearance could imply that the codpiece itself is rhetorically positioned as an object of envy (as with Karkat) -- most likely envied by Jane (a transmasculine sentiment like her mustaches), but perhaps also envied by the reader, who gets positioned as the cuck by dint of watching Jane express interest in the package.

2 - But before we get ahead of ourselves, we should also note that the codpiece itself could be the link between the "fake" phalluses on either side. The story later dwells on how Gamzee's godtier costume and his wings are fabricated -- this also calls his codpiece and its contents into question. This preturns us to the eternal question of whether Gamzee "is" (or represents) a black guy or if he "is" (or represents) a white guy affecting blackness... and I don't have an answer for that! Sometimes he seems to occupy both terminals of that binary at whim.

I had a similar problem apprehending Karkat post-Slurquest -- does he represent a trans dude with his Bloody gash aspect symbol and blood-covered planet insulting his efforts to conceal himself, or does he represent a white cis dude who is being ruthlessly feminized by the racist porn tropes that inform the story? I'm not sure that question can be resolved, but both perspectives are useful in apprehending the story around him. The story is engaged with the gendering of race, and narratives around race bleeds into the presentation of individuals' genders.

3 - Bonus: if we narrow our scope for "codpiece" parallels to Myststuck itself, the closest in form (and rhyme!) are probably the "seedpods" that litter Jane's planet. Karkat jokes about thrusting the codpiece into Shangri-La, while seedpods fly up into heavenly Skaia. The pods shoot out water/seeds to fertilize the ground as they fly. The name "seed pod" was earlier applied to Demon Mobster Kingpin's weakpoint, which was some sort of thorny baby/penis.

The potions Gamzee sells are ALSO shaped like the seed pods, but troll "genetic material" is linked to blood so the implicit sexualization of blood vials doesn't really surprise me at this point. And I have a whole other post dealing with the decapitation motifs that involves, but we don't need to get into terrorism theming here I think...

4 - More bonuser bonus: worth noting that the initial penis to haunt Jane was on the Dr. Manhattan poster that Jake gave her. One of Gamzee's functions was to sell love potions to Jane (to coerce Jake into returning her feelings), so his codpiece feels loosely connected to the GIANT MUTANT PENIS jokes that Jake gets from Manhattan and Hulk. If the ambiguities of attraction/identification seen with Gamzee apply, we might infer Jake gives Jane gender envy.

[oututopia]

HIV-AIDS metaphor in series 1-4 of Doctor Who (2005)

Fair warning that you have to accept that there is at least homoerotic tension between the Doctor and the Master to understand this post.

The Time War was first and foremost a narrative device used by RTD to answer a plot hole he had created himself in his pitch to the BBC to revive Doctor Who. Indeed, he suggested “no baggage” which meant no Time Lords & no Gallifrey. (T is for Television by Mark Aldridge and Andy Murray)

That doesn’t mean we can’t question what it symbolises in the show and in its time.

(Two important caveats:

The AIDS epidemic is still very much happening.

Any depiction of the AIDS crisis / any metaphor will be fragmented and very much subjective because a writer and a reader / viewer watches from a specific point of view)

I’ve considered a few key episodes but truthfully you can consider all of series 1 to 4 as part of this idea. Of course, the series 3 finale trilogy has a key place in this.

The End of the World

Dalek

Father’s Day

New Earth

School Reunion

Gridlock

Utopia

The Sound of Drums

Last of the Time Lords

End of Time part 1

The Doctor finds himself the only surviving member of his planet. “I lived. Everyone else died. - What do you mean? –  Everyone died Sarah.” (School Reunion, Doctor Who, Series 2) And he’s left fending for himself in the world. Then there’s guilt, RTD didn’t bother to make it subtle. Survivor’s guilt and are recurring theme of first 3 series of Doctor Who. It starts to make sense with Dalek and it’s an ongoing theme from then on.

Many queer people found themselves the only surviving person of their group of friends. If they were HIV-positive a lot of them wondered how they managed to survive it, if they were HIV-negative they sometimes wondered how they didn’t get it. Trauma in long term survivor of AIDS has been studied both through psychological and sociological lenses, enormous loss and guilt always come up. And it’s something that you can find in memoirs and autobiographies.

Outside of the Utopia - The Sound of the Drums - Last of the Time Lords there is one scene I want to discuss in depth:

Gridlock is an interesting episode. The conversation between the Face of Boe and the Doctor mirrors the one he will have with the Master later in the series (and we will talk about it). But more than that the conversation between Martha and the Doctor at the very end of the episode is fascinating.

“I lied to you, because I liked it. I could pretend. Just for a bit, I could imagine they were still alive, underneath a burnt orange sky. I'm not just a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. The Face of Boe was wrong. There's no one else. – What happened? – There was a war. A Time War. The last Great Time War. My people fought a race called the Daleks, for the sake of all creation. And they lost. They lost. Everyone lost. They're all gone now. My family, my friends, even that sky. Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet. The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine. The leaves on the trees were silver, and when they caught the light every morning, it looked like a forest on fire. When the autumn came, the breeze would blow through the branches like a song.” (Gridlock, Doctor Who, Series 3)

The Doctor and Martha’s relationship has been analysed in many ways and I won’t try to argue with them here. However, I think at that very moment we can see the Doctor as an old(er) gay man talking about the loss not only of his friends but of the places he had come to call home.

All this in an episode where we’ve seen a city devastated by an epidemic.

Now about the finale three episodes of series 3:

I won’t go too much into the Doctor/Master relationship because the relationship between Ten and Simm has been analysed thoroughly before. However, in Utopia the Doctor tells him two things, that they are both alone and he is sorry.

One of the last scenes of Last of the Time Lords features the Master dying in the Doctor’s arms while the Doctor begs for him to stay alive “You've got to. Come on. It can't end like this. You and me, all the things we've done. (…) We're the only two left. There's no one else. Regenerate!” (Last of the Time Lords, Doctor Who, Series 3).

Someone is begging his friend to stay alive. He is asking him to use a treatment available to him, a treatment that has been shown to be painful and traumatic but it’s the only way to stay alive. It’s also the only way his friend won’t be alone again. Real life translation – HIV first effective treatments did work but people were sometimes burnt out.

I have wanted to make a post for a little while but hearing RTD talk about Queer as Folk and It’s a sin made me want to write about this.

I hope you found something interesting here.

(finally wrote this @roxannepolice )

[raspberry-gloaming]

I think the visuals (colours, outfits, sets, everything) of Wish World demonstrate a particular thing that I dislike about the new RTD era. I'm aware that for Wish World and also Dot and Bubble this aesthetic and bright cleanless is used to demonstrate the like supposed 'utopia' that something is intended to be but isnt/is only like that for the few, but I can still see quite a level of this in the rest of the RTD2 era.

I think this visual is one of the reasons for the criticism of the era as 'Americanised'. Now, this vibe of course is not limited to purely American tv, however I've seen personally irl and online an association of Brits of it to American tv, particularly American sitcoms.

I'll use Ghosts as an example - BBC Ghosts and CBS Ghosts visually look very different - from a British perspective, CBS Ghosts can look artificial, fake, slightly uncanny vally almost. It's very different to the dusty, lived in look of BBC Ghosts. I feel this is pretty common, especially looking at the visuals of other 21st century British sitcoms, especially in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Take Gavin and Stacy, or Outnumbered, for example. A key part of British sitcoms is the relatableness, that they're people who you can see in the people around you or easily imagine knowing someone like that as a rule. While American sitcoms have a more focus on idealism and upward motion and the American dream - a core difference I think between British and American humour as reflected in the sitcoms. I know there are video essays out there explaining this further and better than me so feel free to look them up if you want to understand this more.

I want to preface because this is the misinterpretation website that I am not saying one is automatically/always for everybody better than the other, but I, and other Brits, prefer the British style, as it works better with our culture and understanding of humour, and for us the American style can seem very off, 'fake', and immersion breaking. The resemblance of the new dw to this style I feel links in my brain subconsciously to this and breaks my immersion and can feel an unexplainable 'off-ness'

[fatallyaddictedtofiction]

super niche but I sometimes imagine Caleb casting fire spells like Arby/Pietre shoots guns in BBCs utopia

[teeth--thief]

I hope you missed the feeling of a full, Chornobyl-themed inbox. You'll have to get used to it! Do you know any good documentaries, interviews, videos, etc. about Chornobyl? Whether direct links (YT or otherwise), or just the titles, it'd be a big help for me. - R

If something is not linked right or there's any other problem, please let me know! Drafting text posts on mobile is an absolute nightmare. They still haven't fixed the bug that randomly deactivates hyperlinks and messes with whole paragraphs of text... delightful.

Let's see what I have saved... @deadvitya you asked for "good" stuff - now, I'm not sure if I'd clarify all of these as good, but at least most of them aren't the silly and very dramatised "documentaries."

Предупреждение (1986)

3828

Belonging

Exodus

These places are dear to me

Unforgettable

Threshold

The Bell of Chernobyl

Pripyat Chernobyl Year 1996

Pripyat archival footage from 1986 till 1990

About Vashchuk (one/two/three/parts of these available here with translation)

Розщеплені на атоми

Lyudmila Ignatenko about HBO's show | Vasily's mother and Svetlana Aleksevich (ugh)

Літературно-експертні вечори "Ті, хто не залишив варту" (part 1/part 2)

The Chernobyl Labyrinth: The Search for Khodemchuk with Aleksandr Agulov

Aleksandr Kupnyi has a lot of interviews; some of his videos are even translated

Поход в шахту реактора a.k.a archival footage from 1998 posted by Kupnyi that deserves its very own mention

The Chornobyl Family YouTube channel

That Chernobyl Guy (obviously)

Чернобыльская атомная

Interview with Valery Perevozchenko's wife

Compiled bits of (incredibly depressing) interviews with Vera Toptunova (Leonid Toptunov's mother)

Interview with Oleksiy Breus

Boris Stolyarchuk interview

Не спрашивай, по ком звонит колокол (a warning: it starts with the exhumation of Shashenok's body)

Колокол Чернобыля

Maximum Allowable Dose (a documentary with the focus on Legasov)

The Telecon documentary channel has a TON of archival footage from the liquidation efforts (including this one in which they're bothering Steinberg as he's having lunch lmao)

The hour long interview with Dyatlov

A much shorter interview with Dyatlov

Recordings from the beginning of the infamous trial

Pre disaster Bryukhanov interview

A short 1996 Bryukhanov interview

Fomin appearance from a TV programme

Firefighters interview

Chernobyl: Utopia in Flames (I dont have a nice streaming link, but I do have this)

Chernobyl: Two Colors of Time (it's a trilogy, but I can't find the first part as of right now. Here are the second and the third)

Phone conversations from the night of the disaster (acted out, not the actual recording, of course)

A few things (not videos) I have miraculously saved and not lost and forgotten about immediately after reading:

Interview with Sitnikov's widow

Interview with Aleksandr Akimov's childhood friend

Chernobyl Critical Blog

Inexplicably gone (since last year, I think) but archived on the Wayback Machine, Francesca Dani's Heroes of Chernobyl articles. It included an interview with Leonid Toptunov's mother.

Note: I deliberately did not add documentaries such as "Hour by Hour", the BBC one, "The Final Warning" (yes, like the book) etc etc, because they're easy to find and also... you know... not that good. Honourable mention: the "Zero Hour" documentary, which did a great job casting the control room staff (and nothing else). I'm sure that I'm forgetting a ton of things, but I'd say it's a solid starting point.

[daughterofheartshaven]

I had to take a bit of a break from Doctor Who novels to reread my Becky Chambers books this month, and next month I have several books written by friends lined up, but AFTER that I’m going back to reading Doctor Who.

I tried starting last time with the vna where Benny shows up (Love and War, I think?) but I was getting bored with it so now I will ask my better-read friend: where do you think I should start with reading eu books? To date I have only actually finished a few novelizations, some meta books, and Prisoner of the Daleks

I have no idea what your Doctor Who book taste is likely to be, and given that you liked Prisoner of the Daleks and I didn't and that you got bored with a book by Paul Cornel, I can conclusively state that we have very different tastes. So I'm going to recommend a bunch of Doctor Who books with a brief blurb about why I'm recommending them so you can make an informed decision on if you might like them. For the record, I have read pretty much all of the Virgin Doctor Who books (I skipped a few ones I knew I would not like), but have read less than a quarter of the BBC Doctor Who books, so this is going to be a very Virgin-Books oriented reccomendation.

So whenever I talk about the Virgin New Adventures, I will say that Theatre of War, Human Nature, and The Also People are in a three-way tie for my favorites of the range, so let's start with those.

Theatre of War: This is the book that introduced Braxiatel to the Whoniverse. Sometimes when a character gets introduced, it takes them a bit to find their feet and get their characterization nailed. This is not one of those times. Also notable for pulling off the best plot twist I have ever seen anywhere. The basic plot revolves around a theatre-obsessed empire funding an archeological dig to find a theatre machine, but the machine goes haywire and starts becoming actively dangerous.

Human Nature: The story that inspired the Tennant two-parter. It's not as focused on the tragedy of John Smith, but in exchange it has a very fleshed out cast of super interesting characters (the Family of Blood equivalent are now six fully fleshed out characters, as are several of the students and a few people from the local town) and focuses more on the futility of war. Timothy is also much more layered character here. We actually get a lot of lore about Gallifrey. One of the most emotional books I've ever read. I will say this is written by Paul Cornell, same guy who wrote Love & War, so if you don't like his prose or something be aware of that.

The Also People: A murder mystery set on the most realistic depiction of a utopia I have ever read. Unlike most Who books, the threat is on the back burner for almost the entire book, so while there is a mystery at hand, we get to just explore the setting and learn about how it works, and it's wonderful. This is a book about how society functions once it is truly post-scarcity, and the worldbuilding is so rich and accessible and wonderful.

And now some other more random books.

Festival of Death: The best Four/Romana book out there. Period. Also if you like time travel stories, this is for you - this makes Steven Moffat's stuff look simple. But the book does an amazing job of guiding the reader through the whole convoluted plot, so I never felt lost. The Doctor arrives on a space station, then discovers that yesterday, he stopped a zombie apocalypse on said station. So he has to go back in time and do that. That's how it starts, anyway - it gets so much more interesting from there.

Timewyrm: Revelation: This is another VNA, and while it does kinda close an arc, you don't need to understand the arc to make it work. A brilliant character study of both the Doctor and Ace that really understands both as characters. The plot isn't dependent enough on anything that came before, and is kind of a multi-Doctor story without actually being one. That'll make sense if you read it. It's very surreal. Also written by Paul Cornell, if that's a problem.

Blood Harvest / Goth Opera: Two connected books (one with the Seventh Doctor, one with the Fifth), that are notable for explaining how, when, and why Romana returned to the universe and sets her on her political path. They're both vampire stories - Blood Harvest is very tonally similar to State of Decay in your old classic-style horror, where Goth Opera is a much more sleek and modern take on the vampiric concept. Goth Opera is another Cornell book.

The Gareth Roberts books: Three very-well written, Douglas-Adams-esque books featuring the Fourth Doctor and Romana II. I bring them up because I know you really like the Fourth Doctor and Romana II, and these three books do replicate that era very well. Unfortunately, they had the misfortune to be written by Gareth Roberts, who was kicked out of being a Who writer in 2019 for being transphobic. The books are The Romance of Crime, The English Way of Death, and The Well-Mannered War, and while I do think they are well-written, I totally respect if it you'd rather read something by someone who wasn't an asshole.

All-Consuming Fire: The Doctor Who / Sherlock Holmes crossover, and it is glorious. The first third of the story is just a Sherlock Holmes story that happens to have the Seventh Doctor in it. The last third of the story is a standard Doctor Who story that has Sherlock Holmes in it. The middle is an equal mix of the two. Narrated from the diaries of Doctor Watson and Bernice Summerfield. I also do need to state that the story does do the Really Bad Thing of claiming that a Hindu god is an alien, and the way that is handled is just... so problematic. I love this story, but I cannot in good faith recommend it without that caveat and not wanting to see that is a valid reason to give this one a pass.

Dreams of Empire: This is my nostalgia concession - while it was not strictly speaking my first piece of Who EU, it was certainly the first one I loved. It features Second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria, and uses a sci-fi setting to basically explore "what would have happened if Julias Ceaser had been peacefully removed from power"? Nice political intrigue piece set inside a prison in space. I know you're not as much about the Second Doctor as I am but the writing really does nail him here.

Cold Fusion: Probably my favorite multi-Doctor story in any medium. The fifth Doctor (with Tegan Nyssa Adric) meets the Seventh (with Chris and Roz, who are a pair of cops from a thousand years in the future who realized that ACAB still applies and ran away from their jobs with the Doctor). This one is one of the fastest-moving Doctor Who books, and while it has a lot of depth, it doesn't really front-load anything. Really solid character work with all seven returning characters, explores the setting (a human fringe colony world) really well, and has some good Gallifrey lore.

Lungbarrow: I... actually don't think you should go with this one. At least not at first. Now, its really good! Don't get me wrong. But it is also very dense in its prose and I suspect would be a lot harder to get into than most of the other books I've rattled off, and it does assume you've been reading Doctor Who books. I wouldn't call it a good place to start. But I would be doing you a disservice to not include it, because Lungbarrow is one million percent the precursor to the Gallifrey series - we have Romana and Leela in their familiar roles, with Ferian standing in for Narvin. The dynamic between the three of them isn't, like, what Lungbarrow is about, but it is there. Given how much you love Gallifrey, I can't skip it. Just maybe save it for once you've read a few virgin books and gotten used to how dense their prose always seems to be (Lungbarrow is by far not the worst at this, but I would argue it is probably one of the worst that is still very much worth reading. Marc Platt and Kate Orman have this annoying tendency to write truly amazing books that also have very dense prose).

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

last time i watched utopia was 8 yrs ago i think but sometimes. sometimes this final scene slips through my mind and i feel weak in my knees and i want to fall on the floor cover my head in hands and start howling like a wounded animal

[fluffypotatey]

you know, i see Heimerdinger from arcane similar to how i see Gaius from bbc merlin, and tbh i see both characters viewed and examined very similarly in fandom spaces

both are characters driven, essentially by their own fears when it comes to magic and lean more towards science as a more beneficial and neutral option. Heimerdinger watched mages and others go mad with power over magic leading to war and thousands of unnecessary deaths all in the pursuit of power. Gaius watched a king commit the genocide of his community because magic would not bend to his will

Gaius advises and urges Merlin to stay low and keep his head down, to barely practice magic because of the giant risk of execution if he is ever found out. Gaius is even complacent to the acts of King Uther throughout the show because of said fear. he even advises Merlin to not tell Morgana about her own magic nor give her some hope of community believing that her ignorance will grant her safety and plausible deniability. Morgana’s knowledge and position as ward are too risky to be combined

but it all gets fucked over anyway because of the complacency. because of the secrets

Heimerdinger objects to Jayce’s experimentation of magic and science, terrified that it will lead to the same horrors of war he saw centuries before. and there is some merit in that thinking since many council members care more about their power and influence than true progression. but in Heimerdinger’s own paranoia of magic, he neglects the Undercity. he neglects Zaun because he is so focused on creating a city without the need of magic and a city of utopia with scientific progress. Heimerdinger forgets and turns a blind eye to Zaun because “progress takes time” and fixing the issues within Piltover and Zaun is too long term and too much of a risk. and Heimerdinger is done with taking risks

but it all gets fucked over anyway because of Piltover’s neglect. because they were too narrowed minded on themselves to look down

but unlike Gaius, Heimerdinger is given the chance to go back. he got to go to a Piltover that was not yet introduced to Hextech, that wasn’t so separated from the Undercity just yet. he was given a chance to take the leap he was too scared to jump before

near the end of s1, Heimerdinger saw what his negligence has done. he is forced to look down and be granted the perspective he refused to see with Jayce and Viktor. Ekko made him listen and showed him how the Undercity had to adapt and progress despite the neglect and how many people he has left behind who could do so much good

and there’s a bit of tragedy to that. here is Heimerdinger, able to fix his wrongs but in a different universe and doesn’t even get to see or know that his efforts for his world aid them.

for Gaius, there was always that fear of discovery. some times he would help in the shadows and archive lost work, but the Purge taught him to bring no attention to himself or Merlin when it came to magic (the only times he would are when Merlin was in danger. it’s those moments where he breaks his own code and draws attention to himself which 🥺 whatever 😭)

but yeah, food for thought. very interesting comparison between the two

[pynkhues]

do you feel like acquiring newsreader indicates an investment or confidence in Sam/IWTV? I'm excited to finally be able to (legally lol) watch it.

Mm, yes and no? I think there are a few things at play, but I do think it indicates some interesting strategic moves and them strengthening their relationship with the ABC, which is our Australian equivalent of the BBC in the UK as a taxpayer funded, government-owned national broadcaster. The ABC makes The Newsreader, but also already airs a lot of AMC shows here (IWTV, Killing Eve and Kevin Can Fuck Himself being the main ones, I think), so they already seem to have some sort of distribution deal between them.

The Australian government has been in the process of introducing quotas for international streamers. This has been a long, drawn out, politically fraught process in the industry, so I won't get into the weeds of all of it, but the basic facts of it are that some time in the next year or so, the Australian government will be telling Netflix, Disney, Prime, etc. that they have to invest a certain amount in Australian content, either by making it or acquiring it, if they want to continue operating in the country.

The streamers - particularly Netflix - have been aggressively fighting the government on this, hence this process has been drawn out and the unions have all been doing a lot of work to keep it high on the agenda (like, we were supposed to know what the quotas were going to be in mid-2023 and probably won't until mid-2025 at this rate. Netflix is the one who was pushing it back specifically until after the election, because they think a Trump administration might be able to crush the quotas going through at all - it's been....pretty ugly and very frustrating and very much a reminder that Australia has very little weight on the world stage).

AMC (and Prime, actually, of which AMC+ is a channel on here) though has kind of I'd say been leaning into it a little? They've been really ramping up their presence at conferences and markets here and seem to be genuinelly trying to work with local producers in getting ahead of it. AMC hasn't made many Australian shows yet (although they've made a First Nations vampire show, Firebite, which is unfortunately not very good), but I know they've been out here quite a lot in-person, and I know my producer has met with them a few times and likes the team and thinks they're genuine in wanting to work with Australian creative teams.

The ABC makes quite a lot of Australian shows (again, they're owned by the Australian government, so they kind of have to, haha) and a lot of it is pretty good? The Newsreader's just one part of their drama slate, but they do a lot of comedy (including two of our best sitcoms, Utopia and Fisk) too. Developing a stronger relationship with the ABC and potentially having a reciprocal distribution deal could be a very good way for AMC+ to get on top of the streaming quotas early, become a preferred partner for Australian producers by being an early adopter, and just overall develop relationships with Australian talent, which they're doing not just with Sam through IWTV, but Emma as a director who also directs both for IWTV and literally every episode of The Newsreader.

That's not even getting into the fact that Australia has one of the best tax offsets for productions and post-production in the world, which is definitely of interest to them, I'd say, given one of the only country's that beats our offset is Prague which is notably where they shoot IWTV, haha. It's why so many blockbusters are shot here though, from Fall Guy to Aquaman, and why so many films do their post-production here.

So yeah, I would say it's probably a little bit indicative of an investment in Sam (and Emma), but I think it's also probably more about shoring up their relationship with the ABC ahead of the quotas being introduced (if they even are anymore). That said, I do think AMC is invested in IWTV - they're putting a lot into building out that storyworld and spinning off franchises and IWTV is the anchor of all of that. :-)

[lieutgore]

working on a terror utopia au for an audience of One single person (me) (please watch bbc's utopia) (free on youtube)

[canyounotexistelias]

As a fan of ghosts bbc who has never watched the American version but has heard that’s it’s not nearly as good, here’s my ideal list of characters. Because really, American history is so bonkers, how do you not make it incredibly entertaining? Just the premises of the time era/

Character 1: Native American, 1200’s/BEFORE Christopher Columbus

I don’t know what area of America the reboot takes place, but in my ideal version, it’s in upstate New York for reasons I’ll elaborate on later. Bc of that, the character is form the Iroquois Confederacy- I think maybe part of the Oneida tribe? (Also for reasons I’ll explain later). Either way, they’re not quite like Robin as they’re not the “appear stupid but smart” type of character, a bit more like Humphrey I think.

Character 2: a Viking

I just think it’d be neat. I don’t know nearly as much about the Vikings as other characters, but that way we’d get a bit of variety. Maybe a bit more like Robin, but mainly a side character that appears every once in a while, like how Humphrey does.

Character 3: pilgrim/puritan

Ideally mid-1600s, so before revolutionary war but at height of witch burning frenzy. Could be similar to Mary, but I’m thinking more so in uptight, rule-following in the beginning, but secretly far more adventurous than most (more similar to Fanny maybe).

Character 4: utopia member

I’m not a huge fan of the revolutionary era, I’m afraid, so no revolutionary characters. However, I absolutely adore the antebellum era as a time to study because it was so wild, so a character from that time! We have a relatively normal, nice ghost, except they were part of a utopia cult- bonus points if it’s the Oneida community or the shakers.

Character 5: almost a flapper from the 20’s.

This is our almost-kitty! She’s the younger sister of a flapper, loved music, and had obviously family issues- maybe also communist to deal with Red Scare #1? Would be interesting.

Character 6: man of the house in the 50’s.

This is the alternate version of the Captain. He’s a WW2 vet who came back to the US, died in 53 and is very, very gay. probably a government person who had to go through the lavender scare as well? (The captain’s my favorite I had to make sure they did him respect)

Character 7: Reagan fan

In honor of Julian the Tory, we have a Reaganite as well. NOT like Julian in any other respect simply bc I think that fits better for the next character- mostly a Traditional Family person who appears very kind but can be CRUEL- think your republican aunt. She’s a 45 year old who has some Very Pointed Opinions about trickle-down economics, but still died early into reagan’s reign.

Character 8: stockbroker from 2000’s

This is Julian. He died right before the stock market crash out of humiliation from a sex scandal, of course, while residing in his families’ upstate house. Why, you may ask? Well, because it’s funny.

Anyways, I have no idea if this matches any of the ghosts CBS characters, but I think this would be an ideal American Cast. Feel free to add anything if you disagree/have ideas.