Orange is the New Black: Review

After having spent in prison with the inmates from behind my computer screen for about a week, I'm sure Netflix' Orange is the New Black is one of the best TV-series of 2013.

Orange is the New Black follows Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), who is sent to women's prison because she transported a suitcase of drugs money for her former girlfriend years ago. That's right, although Piper is engaged to her boyfried Larry now, she used to be a lesbian, as are many of her fellow inmates.

Although the pilot episode contains quite a lot vulgar scenes (which I absolutely dislike and are also the reason I don't watch Game of Thrones), the underlying storyline and subplots are more than just entertaining. In prison Piper walks into this ex-girlfriend of hers, called Alex (Laura Prepon), which brings along the obvious consequences. Each episode also hightlights the pre-prisonlife of one of the other inmates, which makes you sympathize with every single one of them. Next to that, a lot of intrigue and drama is going on in this high-schoolish, 'small village'-like ghetto called prison, which makes sure you will be clustered toyour screen for t he full hour the episode lasts.

Orange is the New Black is a mixture of primarily comedy, with crime and drama, based on the memoires of Piper Kerman. According to other reviews, the series reflects prisonlife fairly well. An interesting, very originnal primetime TV-series of newcomer Neflix, which I now count on to produce more awesome TV-series in the future.

P.S. There's also lots of great acting to enjoy and a lot of faces to recognize from the past!

TV-Series: Orphan Black

Orphan Black features around the story of Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany), a reckless ex-foster kid criminal in her late twenties. When she sees a woman that looks just like her jump in front of a train, she sees a chance to solve her own problems and assumes the woman’s identity. Unfortunately for Sarah, becoming cob Beth Childs brings only bigger problems upon her, especially when it turns out she and Beth are part of a large number of clones!

Only three weeks ago I started watching this new Canadian BBC TV-series, and after the first episode, I immediately wanted to see the next. It had been a long time until I stumbled upon a TV-series this good, and so it is sure worth a blog-post.

During the series, we follow several great story arcs next to the main storyline which centres around finding out who made the clones, and even more so, who is trying to kill them.

Naturally, one of the storylines follows Sarah, a criminal with a seven-year-old daughter, who she left with her ex-foster mother one year ago. Taking on the life of Beth Childs, she all of a sudden has to act like a cob, who is in the middle of a trial because she recently shot someone. Next to that, she has to replace Beth in her relationship with Paul.

Now known as Beth, Sarah soon comes in contact with two other clones, Cosima and Alison. Cosima is a geeky and eccentric biology student and the complete opposite of Sarah. As is Alison, a suburban soccer mom with two adopted children. Quickly they find themselves caught in a conspiracy regarding the clones.

As the series progresses more clones come across and we get to know more about the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘who’; Each clue is really fun to find out! The series offers great cliff hangers and a huge amount of suspense through the dangers Sarah and the others face by trying to unravel the mystery around them. A portion of action is mixed with drama and sci-fi, combined with humour provided by a host of side-characters, like Sarah’s foster brother Felix.

This summarized, there is already enough reason to start watching this series immediately! But… There is one more great aspect that has to be mentioned: All of the clones are played by the same actress, Tatiana Maslany. The characters may be clones, but they all differ from each other completely: In accent, personality, and approach to being in the world. An incredible performance, which for sure is one more reason to get Orphan Black playing on your screen right now!