


Still, there’s a lot that’s smart and interesting in between whiffs of confusion and fromage. Why is hip-hop banned when other forms of music and dance aren’t just permitted but are central to New Babyl’s culture? Exactly when is this? What are the rules? Fashion seems to be forbidden, but home decoration is not, and the Authorities are allowed pompadours that would make Snooki jealous. There’s an awful lot of throat clearing in the first episode, but you’re still left with questions. The show’s other struggle (besides the actors’ uneven ability to deliver campy dialog in a believable fashion) is its speed-blurred world-building.
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It doesn’t let you infer that free expression and self celebration is freedom in a society that prizes conformist harmony-it just tells you so. If you’re over the age of 13, you’ll probably find that, at times, Utopia Falls is fondue-pot levels of cheesy. It has over a dozen named characters, two love triangles, two major parental identity twists, and a musical’s worth of songs and choreography packed into 10 episodes, and it all (almost) makes sense. It’s very high-concept: Its themes bounce from censorship to racism and classism to diversity to criminal justice reform to expression and art to dissention and protest. It might have the ingredients of Hunger Games or Divergent, but it also aims to be something different-something a bit more nuanced than the standard YA story. Everything about the show suggests great ambition. Hulu touts Utopia Falls as “the first-ever sci-fi hip-hop television series.” That’s more than likely true. “But personal expression is something else. It’s our strength,” the flamboyantly villain-haired Authority Phydra tells them. When they try to bring their newfound passion to the Exemplar competition, they find themselves dissidents. The archive, which is voiced by none other than Snoop Dogg himself, is only too happy to continue their musical education. From the first rhyme- It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up! magazine-they’re entranced by hip-hop.

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The acceptable forms of talent are limited: a modern dance/ballet hybrid, or big showy ballads about how grateful they are to their founder, who led citizens to New Babyl after a tech-fomented disaster they refer to as “the Great Flash.”Įveryone sticks to the program until two of the Exemplars stumble upon a mysterious archive of forbidden, ancient information. Every year in the city of New Babyl, the last living colony on a postapocalyptic Earth, a handful of musically gifted 16-year-olds are chosen to represent their districts in a competition called The Exemplar. To locate it even more precisely within the genre, the show is exactly what it would be like if Panem’s politely grim District 13 put on an annual talent show. It is prestige television for a new generation of young audiences who are culturally diverse, socially and politically minded, and are motivated to see themselves and their issues represented on screen.Utopia Falls is a little bit Hunger Games and a little bit American Idol. Utopia Falls is the first ever Sci-Fi Hip-hop television series, created by R.T. Channeling the rebellious spirit of Hip-hop, Aliyah and her friends face off against the government for the freedom of the people in a finale that will rock the very foundation of their society, changing all of their lives forever. The journey to unravel that mystery will play out over the course of the first season while our candidates prepare and participate in The Exemplar competition. Through the discovery of a mysterious archive, she is exposed to hip-hop, an ancient form of music culture, which will lead her to question everything she has ever known and change her world forever. For all of them it’s a chance to write their names in the history books, but for Aliyah, the independent and adventurous daughter to a city government official, it’s the beginning of an incredible adventure. Hundreds of years in the future, in the last living colony on earth, a city called New Babyl, twenty-four teenage candidates are chosen to take part in an annual musical competition known as The Exemplar.

Official synopsis for Utopia Falls from Hulu press release:
