Utopia season 5, episode 4 recap: underground meetings and school tour troubles

It's a problem that Tony Woodford, the beleaguered National Building Authority boss, comes up against on this week's episode of Utopia, as he learns just how far the government is willing to go to ensure a multi-billion dollar tender goes to the *right* recipient.

Tony is busy finalising bidders for a major international tender to build a regional rail link tunnel, when government liaison Jim Gibson stops by, offering to take the process off his hands. The problem? Canada seems to have withdrawn their offer, and the government wants to suss out who Tony is leaning towards now.

Jim doesn't push it. But when he returns (for "a general catch-up on non-specific matters", he loudly announces to the office), this time Tony is asked to check his smartwatch at the door. China's bid is looking the best, offering the cheapest contract and the fastest turnaround, he explains. Jim is frazzled, and asks Tony to let him know when he's made a decision, "on Signal, code word 'falcon!'".

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From there, things take a Watergate-like turn. A meeting room is swept by security for recording devices; Tony is called down to the basement for a chat in Jim's car; Jim shows up for a park bench meeting in a trench coat and fedora, paranoid that a nearby hot air balloon is a Chinese spy operation. A post-it note with "No China" written on it is (literally) chewed up and swallowed.

"It's the optics, Tony," Jim tells the public service boss, explaining that he's worried a deal with China could piss off our American allies. "We've spent the last five years muscling up to them, talking tough, adopting an aggressive posture. If we sign this deal we could be in real danger."

But Tony's got bigger problems to deal with. He's struggling to decipher the department's aesthetic-looking charts, which are now colour-coded using near-identical shades of purple ("I need a spreadsheet, not a pride flag!").

Plus, a group of school kids - proud winners of the parliamentary prize for environmental studies - are in the office for the week, grilling the team on green hydro, solar panel obsolescence, and their lack of electric vehicle charging stations. "I've sat through more relaxing Senate enquiries," Tony cries.

Meanwhile, Nat's struggling with her new overqualified executive assistant, Carla (played by Shabana Azeez) who has set her sights on bigger ambitions. Within a week she goes from running the joint to leaving the joint, after being seconded to design policy in the minister's office (but not before getting a reference!).

As for the tunnel - in the end, the Prime Minister weighs in and Australia forks out an extra billion to "avoid a few days of bad press and a diplomatic tiff", as Tony puts it.

At one point in the episode, the public service boss attempts to win over the touring students with a Hamilton reference, telling them they're in "the room where it happens". But by the end, Tony is probably realising that wherever that room is, it isn't located in the National Building Authority.

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