‘Utopia,’ an ‘experiment,’ seen as hope for reviving reality TV world

He’s not the world’s most expressive man, but John de Mol Jr. does get visibly peeved if you suggest that his new reality TV show sounds an awful lot like a certain other reality TV show.

“There are so many differences with ‘Survivor’ that I even don’t understand the comparison,” the 59-year-old Dutch TV producer said during a sit-down chat in Universal City earlier this year.

De Mol is pounding the drums for his latest creation, “Utopia,” which drops 15 people into a remote location — in this case, somewhere near Santa Clarita — and asks them to create a separate society over the next year, all within view of more than 125 robotic cameras. No prize is offered, but one “pioneer” is swapped out for a new one every month.

Fox has made a considerable investment in the show in hopes that it can reverse the ratings tumbles of “American Idol” and the now-canceled “X Factor.” The early ratings don’t offer much hope of that, but it’s possible the series could catch on.

“We’re reasonably encouraged by the start, but it’s only the start of what’s likely to be a very long race,” said Simon Andreae, the British broadcasting veteran hired last year by Fox as its reality show guru.

For his part, De Mol sees “Utopia” as not mainly a show at all but rather as a grand “social experiment.”

“We are living in a period right now of crisis, financial crisis,” De Mol said. “People are worried about their future. People are unhappy about laws and regulations. So we came up with the idea of what would happen if you would give 15 strangers the opportunity to start a new civilization, a new world, for their own, from scratch.”

Of course, not all social experiments happen to include an attractive and openly bisexual 26-year-old belly dancer or a 6-foot-tall archer who’s conveniently similar to the heroine of the “Hunger Games” books and movies or a self-described redneck who has no teeth and tends to get into chest-out standoffs with other men.

Social experiments usually don’t linger over video of subjects skinny-dipping, having screaming meltdowns or engaging in sleeping-bag foreplay, as “Utopia” did during its two-hour premiere Sept. 7. Nor are there many statistically scrupulous studies that somehow manage to exclude any subjects over age 48. Mysterious, all that.

But De Mol’s track record demands to be taken seriously. He is the impresario behind some of the biggest reality shows of the last 15 years, including “Big Brother,” “Fear Factor” and “The Voice.” His reach extends far beyond the U.S.; he often starts formats in his native Holland, then expands around the world. According to Forbes, he ranks No. 865 on the list of the world’s richest people, with a net worth of $2.2 billion.

The real question, though, isn’t whether the characters on “Utopia” can save society, but whether the show can help revive reality TV. The genre dominated network prime time for much of the first decade of the 21st century. But De Mol’s “The Voice” on NBC was the last unscripted show to break through to a huge audience — and that was almost four years ago.

“Utopia” is facing a TV landscape that looks, if not quite dystopian, then certainly challenging. While it’s still far too early to predict its eventual fate, ratings for the show’s premiere did not send Fox executives to paradise. A modest average of 4.6 million viewers tuned in, according to Nielsen, with a noteworthy number of them drifting away as the evening progressed. (The show did comparatively better online, though, delivering more than 1 million streams during its first four days of a 24/7 live feed, and also performed better than expected among viewers with DVRs, getting a 20% lift in its ratings among young adults who watched up to three days later.) Subsequent ratings have been even worse: On Tuesday, “Utopia” delivered an underwhelming fourth place finish in the demographic of adults ages 18 to 49, according to Nielsen. “Big Brother” demolished it by a ratio of more than 2-to-1.

But Fox executives say they are invested for the long haul. Andreae said media reports of a $50 million price tag were not accurate but admitted that the show was costlier than the typical reality series due to technical and production requirements. “We didn’t want to cut corners,” he said.

“It’s an expensive and extremely ambitious show,” Andreaesaid in a conference call with reporters. “But this network has never been afraid to roll the dice, never afraid of risk and scale.”

Certainly, the risk is there. De Mol premiered “Utopia” in the Netherlands in January, where it looked like an instant hit.

“My business model has always been: create an idea, create a format, create a protectable copyright,” De Mol said. “Test it in Holland. Once it is a success, come to the United States and the rest of the world. ... We sell proven stuff.”

But in this case, the proof may have been premature. The Dutch ratings soon eroded, which might not bode well for the U.S. version either.

In the meantime, De Mol’s latest project was irking a longtime partner. After De Mol clinched the deal for his U.S. version of “Utopia,” CBS lawyers sent a letter to Fox and Talpa Productions — De Mol’s production company — expressing concern that the format was too similar to “Big Brother” and “Survivor,” according to a source familiar with the situation. Both shows are longtime hits for CBS.

The lawyers also reminded De Mol and Fox that CBS had sued ABC in 2012 over its “Big Brother”-like show “Glass House” — a case that became largely moot after “Glass House” bombed. “Big Brother” is in its 16th season, but CBS hasn’t filed any action so far.

Of course, De Mol disagrees that “Utopia” is a retread of an earlier creation.

“‘Big Brother’ is about winning. It’s a contest,” he said. “‘Utopia’ is not a contest. ‘Utopia’ is not a game. ‘Utopia’ is for real.”

So far, TV critics haven’t found much viewing bliss in “Utopia,” with some complaining that the formula of throwing together a combustible mix of volatile personalities scheming and screaming has grown a bit stale.

“When they argue … it becomes tiring, like listening to the neighbors fight,” Los Angeles Times critic Robert Lloyd wrote. Variety predicted that “if ‘Utopia’ has any legs at all, it will [be] as a cable-style freakshow, not some grand ‘experiment’ in democracy.”

But such voyeurism can lead to unpredictable places, which is exactly what De Mol and Fox are hoping. When a reporter brought up last summer’s controversy on “Big Brother” — contestants were caught on-camera making racist comments — De Mol shrugged.

“Reality television as I have created [it] and I have meant it to be is a mirror of today’s world,” he said. “People make promises and break promises. People behave badly. Some are good. Some are bad. That’s life.”

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‘Utopia’

Where: Fox

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday and Friday

Rating: TV-14-DL (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14 with advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language)