New Town Utopia review: telling the story of Basildon, Essex
THIS thoughtful documentary examines the dreams of British post-war town planners through the story of Basildon in Essex, a town so perfectly designed that they did not bother with a train station. Who wants to leave Utopia?
NEW TOWN UTOPIA
Jim Broadbent voices the lofty ideals of Lewis Silkin MP, a key figure in the new town experiment, while director Christopher Ian Smith takes us to futuristic, modernist municipal buildings and rabbit-warren estates.
He also does something the bureaucrats never did: he talks to the working-class people for whom the town was supposedly built.