Orphan Black: Season 1

That was pretty good! Orphan Black is a Canadian production that premiered a year ago to very moderate hype on BBC America, a channel most basic cable subscribers don't even have. I only vaguely recall hearing about it back then, even though lots of critics were pretty into it. At the end of the year, it appeared on a number of "best of 2013" lists, and within the last week or two I've been bombarded by Internet banner ads for the upcoming second season. (Just me? Anyone else?) At any rate, from my own perspective it feels like Orphan Black is suddenly emerging into the zeitgeist the way so many decent TV shows do when their second seasons premiere. I had to jump in, and after just one episode, I was hooked. But then we moved and changed cable packages and lost BBC America, and rather than pay ten bucks a month for it and some other channels, we decided to just drop eighteen bucks on this Blu-ray. Oh boy, I'm already rambling, and I haven't even begun to sing Orphan Black's praises.

This is a solid B-level high concept sci-fi show like so many others on basic cable - good enough to suck you in at first, but likely too flimsy for multiple years' worth of interest and appeal - elevated substantially by its main characters and the actress who portrays them. No, not the actresses, plural, who portray them, but the actress, singular, who plays all of them: Tatiana Maslany.

You see, if you hadn't heard, Orphan Black is a show about clones. That's selling it a bit short - lots of shows have been "about clones" before - but to say anything else would kind of spoil the show a little bit, and even though it doesn't have the deepest or most clever plot in the world, Orphan Black is fast-paced, entertaining, and appropriately full of twists. Without Tatiana Maslany, it'd make for fine DVR fodder: good enough to watch, but easy enough to ignore. With Tatiana Maslany, however, it's one of my favorite new shows on television.

She's just incredible. She plays three or four main characters and a handful of others who appear for an episode or two, and she gives each one a unique spin without turning any of them into an over-the-top flat mess of stereotypes. Each clone has a unique accent and vocabulary, a distinct look, several of her own ticks and quirks, and, in general, a complete and fleshed out personality. There are often multiple clones in the same scene, where Maslany has only herself to play off of. There are a few instances where one clone, for various reasons, tries to impersonate another, where Maslany has to essentially play two characters at once. It's an incredible feat and it brings the show up from B-level cable thriller to legitimately good stuff.

I was going to end this post by linking to a video of Maslany's various roles, but I couldn't find one without significant spoilers. Just know that these performances include a British con woman, a straight-laced cop, an unhinged Ukrainian murderer, a chic geek West Coast scientist, an uptight soccer mom, and a paranoid German girl on the run. It's a one-woman ensemble, and a good one at that. Check it out!

Gah, fine, here's a picture.