Orphan Black (television series)

 (First off i have no clue why my blog says Les Diaboliques in gray before it says Orphan Black and then the date but whatever.)

Tagline- One. Of.  A. Kind. (Sidenote: There were a couple other taglines depending on country or region but most are a bit spoilery you know?)

Hello again! Today i'm reviewing Orphan Black, a Canadian science fiction thriller TV show that ran from 2013 to 2017. It stars Canadian actress Tatiana Maslany and quite frankly it's a miracle that the rest of the cast holds a candle to her performances in the show. (Yes performances is plural, i'll get to that later.)  

 I wasn't even planning on reviewing it anytime soon (eventually i would've gotten to it because it's one of the best shows i've seen by a long way) but i found myself feeling motivated and here we are. Orphan Black excels at many things, like being very unpredictable and having more twists and turns than King Minos's labyrinth in Greek mythology, so even though i don't have enough space to put even half of them here (not that i would, after all i want you to watch and enjoy it for yourselves) a spoiler warning is definitely warranted here. 

As usual, a somewhat brief (sometimes ;) ) synopsis or preview: Sarah Manning is a British single mom in her 30's who is an orphan and in her childhood was bounced around several orphanages. In her youth she arrived to her foster mother Siobhan Sadler aka Mrs. S. They moved to Canada when Sarah was about 8. Sarah also has a foster brother named Felix. Sarah is still a street punk and hustler though. 

She fell in love with one of her targets Cal Morrison and had a girl named Kira with him. Sarah eventually fell out with Cal and now is basically homeless with Kira, providing food with money conned and stolen from people. In the process she also gets involved with (romantically and platonically) a drug dealer named Vic. It's an on and off relationship and Vic is very abusive to Sarah. Eventually she breaks up with Vic but he still continues to pester her for things.

(Now that the background info is over we actually get to the "brief "synopsis, whoops sorry for that haha.) Sarah is at the train station one day when she witnesses a well dressed, but severely distraught and crying woman that looks exactly like her (also played by Tatiana Maslany) set down her handbag and other personal items, straighten her hair, and then kills herself by stepping in front of an oncoming train. Sarah, while rightly horrified and shocked, sees an opportunity. 

She takes the woman's bag and phone and decides to steal her identity and become the deceased woman, clothes, job, mannerisms, accent, and all.  She works on the accent from watching the deceased's (who she identifies as being named Beth Childs) home videos. Sarah's plan is to drain Beth's bank account and take the money and leave Vic for good with Kira in tow to provide a better life for her. A twist to the tale reveals itself when Sarah impersonating Beth finds out Beth was a cop and she has to investigate Beth's death while keeping her cover intact.

However it turns out that Beth is one of many (276 clones in all, Maslany plays about 15 on screen i think, which is quite the challenge.) created and located all around the world in a project called LEDA by a mysterious organization called the Dyad Institute. Life is not great for the LEDA clones some of whom suffer from an autoimmune disease which ends in coughing up blood and death. Sarah and another clone named Helena (Maslany) don't have this disease though. 

As if the race to find a potential cure/help for the disease wasn't stressful enough, Helena starts out in the series as an assassin, killing other clones one by one because she was raised in a very anti-technology Ukrainian convent and was indoctrinated into believing she's the original woman from which all the other clones were duplicated from. Helena is an antagonist for the first season and a protagonist for the rest of the show. She is definitely one of the most fleshed out characters and easily my favorite performance by Tatiana.

Ok that's enough plot information for now haha. As with a lot of TV shows Orphan Black was directed by many people with John Fawcett directing the most (17) episodes. Graeme Manson also worked on producing and writing the show. On to the cast! The show stars, (and i really mean stars because playing 14-15 distinct characters with complex personalities and backstories is very ambitious but she really makes it work) Tatiana Maslany who has a ludicrous amount of talent. Orphan Black also stars characters such as foster brother Felix, played by Jordan Gavaris, Mrs. S, played by Maria Doyle Kennedy, and Beth's/Sarah's partner on the police force Detective Art Bell played by Kevin Hanchard. 

I'm leaving out certain characters because either their identities are too loaded with spoilers and/or i've already overloaded you with information haha.

Orphan Black quickly went from niche and relatively unknown to international acclaim and winning 68 awards including a 2016 Primetime Emmy award for Tatiana Maslany with an Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She also got nominated for one in 2015 and 2018.

In conclusion Orphan Black is a tv show that has a lot of daring and shoots for the stars and in my opinion definitely succeeds. It has an amazing cast and very riveting plot. It's a tight intense thriller that rarely lets on the brakes, but when it does it takes the time to explore different characters and personalities and inject some much needed humor, and then floors the accelerator again and we're back to epic chase scenes and gritty well choreographed fight scenes and characters dying every 5 minutes or so. Definitely recommend this show to anyone who's interested though probably not to little kids because of the quite frequent violence and almost unbearable tension at times and "technobabble" which may go over their heads. (Why am i doing parental warnings/advice now? I don't know.)

So that's it for today! I hope you could tell i love this series haha.

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Conrad Smith

PS: If you've seen it what thoughts do you have? I like having discussions with viewers :)