Orphan Black (2013-Present)

I got into this show far later than I should have.  I blame BBC America’s aggressive marketing campaign, which had me fast-forwarding through inordinately long ads for it during every Doctor Who commercial break when it was first premiering.  I developed a “you can’t make me!” chip on my shoulder against watching it, so when I started hearing about how incredible it was, I ultimately had to face facts and admit my wrongdoings.  (Premise spoilers by necessity.)

Orphan Black kicks off when Sarah Manning, a young grifter, witnesses the suicide-by-train of a woman who looks exactly like her.  On impulse, she swipes the dead woman’s bag and seeks first to puzzle out who she could have been and next to profit off their uncanny resemblance.  What she uncovers, though, is larger than any potential score:  she’s part of a clandestine scientific experiment, one of a number of illegally-cultivated human clones.  The threads of who she is and where she comes from pull apart as she meets clone after clone and gets entrenched in the many mysteries and dangers that surround them.  From their shadowy geneticist creators to an extremist religious order against the thought of anyone playing God, Sarah and her newfound “sisters” fight the forces opposing them and try to understand what they’re for.

It’s not a perfect show.  The full-throttle pace of the ever-evolving main arc, while an exciting ride, sometimes feels unfocused.  Newly-peeled-back layers of the conspiracy don’t always seem to grow organically from one another, and on the antagonistic side of things, there’s an occasional sense that the show is constantly “leveling up” to bigger and bigger bosses, all but discarding the Big Bads who’ve come before.  However, it’s still a gripping story with some nice twists and creative problem-solving from the central ladies, and the breakneck speed means nothing gets drawn out into oblivion, which can be a common problem in genre series.

When it comes to the main characters, I have nothing but praise.  The show does a fantastic job creating a whole mess of clones, all of whom are wonderfully distinct, and the relationships between them are as rich as they are entertaining.  I love watching Sarah’s journey from “This is impossible!” to “I can’t get involved with this!” to “If you hurt any of my sisters, I will end you!”  Tatiana Maslany, who plays the assorted members of Clone Club, is every bit as stellar as the reviews say she is, and the only reason she isn’t flush with Emmys is because the Emmys are snobs about sci-fi.  In addition to playing five major characters and various other briefly-appearing clones, she also beautifully pulls off numerous instances of one clone posing as another.  And the show’s not a one-trick pony – there are plenty of memorable non-clone characters as well.  I especially like Sarah’s foster brother Felix, who soon becomes something of a brother to all of them.

As if being a great show replete with female characters weren’t enough, Orphan Black also includes well-fleshed characters from each of the letters in LGBT (the T, alas, is the thinnest, since the brief-but-impactful trans character has only made one appearance to date.) 

Warnings

Violence, sexual content (including sex scenes,) language, alcohol/drug use, tricky moral questions, and thematic elements.