Utopia season 4, episode 1 recap: The light rail Canberra shouldn't have built?

The ABC TV comedy is often invoked by those describing bureaucratic fumbling.

"It's like an episode of Utopia" are words bound to be repeated as the satire airs its fourth season after a two-year break.

The series is about as painfully close to reality as ever. Its latest outing even ribs the newly-completed Canberra light rail project.

Episode one also bears a reminder the show has now outlived two prime ministers.

Scott Morrison's voice plays over its opening theme where a shrill Tony Abbott once declared his wish to be the "infrastructure prime minister".

Remember that only days before the start of the newest season, Mr Morrison this week promised the Human Services Department's coming transformation into Services Australia would be no simple rebranding exercise.

It will still take some rebadging, beckoning the kind of world Utopia lampoons. Imagine it for a second. Expect new visuals (come here, Karsten) and some public relations (Rhonda's on the phone) and for all we know, a logo resembling a Pink Floyd album cover. Really, let's hope not.

In these congestion-busting times, the show about an infrastructure agency struggling to land a project feels even more relevant. It also now bears a trace of the post-Hayne Royal Commission regulatory scene.

Who knows what the Prime Minister would make of the workplace depicted in Utopia, but let's hazard a guess. It's not the kind of place with middle Australia in its line of sight, as Mr Morrison wants.

For a reporter writing about the public service, Utopia is a kind of exposure therapy. I mean this in a nice way. Those things that can be frustrating by day grow less so, the more the show delves into those places.

It can only be more cringe-inducing for those who actually live that world day to day. By the same logic, it must also be more therapeutic.

So then, let's open up and talk about episode one, season four: The Law's the Law.

Prime ministers have changed since the show started in 2014, but the NBA has not.

Season four picks up where the agency has always been. Tony Woodford (Rob Sitch) is trying to get things done, but his office is conspiring for him to do anything but.

His personal assistant Katie Norris (Emma-Louise Wilson) is bothering him about a toll fine her parents copped. Government liaison Jim Gibson (Anthony Lehmann) is testing him on some hideous words that make their way into the public service ("ruralisation" is one, and but a heart-beat from the "regionalisation" entering the real-life government's parlance).

READ MORE:

It's a hard time for Tony, as a grumpy fill-in receptionist commits all manner of administrative sins that are somehow unpunishable in the public sector. Everything is just too hard for Eileen, who speaks rudely to visitors and leaves the NBA boss on hold when he calls for something on the internal line. She'll do a lunch run, but won't go to more than one place. There's an Eileen lurking in many an office block.

Head of security Brian Collins (Jamie Robertson) is clearing up PR props and regalia from past government projects (most of them failed). Media manager Rhonda Stewart (Kitty Flanagan) wants a meeting about the upcoming intergenerational report, except no one's actually read it.

"I'm working my way through," says project manager Ashan De Silva (Dilruk Jayasinha), holding up his wrapped copy.

"It's covered in plastic," replies Nat Russell (Celia Pacquola).

"I've finished the cover," Ashan says.

The episode is above all about justice, and how the public service metes it out. Tony asks for a "back of the envelope" picture of a company's structure and stumbles across a multinational tax rort. It's no one-off either. A bit of digging shows it's happened with many companies under the NBA's regulatory hammer.

Who needs to read an intergenerational report, if all you have to do is sell it, right? The team leans on Q ratings - a measure of a celebrity's popularity - to do the job. It calls in "handsome, wholesome, professional" Bondi vet Dr Chris Brown to be the report's ambassador.

He's a conscientious dose of sense, rigour and care. It's too much for the NBA. Dr Brown knows more about the report, and the previous one, than any of the people paid to know about these things.

He spots inconsistencies across the documents no one else has seen. He bothers Nat on videophone, asking about the interaction of the three key drivers of economic growth identified in the report.

Rhonda really just wants him to look good and deliver the lines she gives him. As always in the NBA, the message must get out, no matter what it actually says. The Prime Minister wants public servants to be "doers", but Rhonda is ever the model of doing for doing's sake.

Out of a box come more ghosts of infrastructure projects past. Brian waves old souvenirs in front of Tony. The Clem 7 tunnel? It went bankrupt, the boss says. The BaT tunnel? Cancelled, Tony remarks.

Canberra light rail? "Should have been cancelled," Tony says. No doubt these are words like nails down a blackboard for many an ACT official.

"Attack dog" lawyer Bruce Dennis is sent to give Tony some legal "guidance" on the tax evasion scam. He decides to proceed cautiously but promises to be stern. The offenders soon agree to mend their ways on condition of an amnesty from prosecution. Bruce and Jim call it a victory.

What's a decade-long court battle going to get you, after all?

"Justice! They should be prosecuted!" Tony cries out. What about taxpayers?

"What have they got to do with it?" Jim says.

Middle Australia is truly in the regulator's line of sight, Prime Minister.

This is the law of the land inside the NBA.

It's not an entirely unfair world, though. Someone anonymously pays the CityLink fine for Katie's parents.

A kind of justice prevails in the little things, at least.

The next episode of Utopia season 4 will air on the ABC at 9pm, Wednesday August 28.