You Woke Up In A Yurt...

This past couple of weeks I've been watching my dvd set of Orphan Black.  The show ran 5 seasons and while the overall plot got a bit overly convoluted, causing me at times to lose track of who the actual bad guys were, it hangs together pretty well over the 50 episodes, 41 of which I've plowed through.  Even with the occasional confusion about motives, this show is easily the one of the best shows of any stripe produced in the last 10 years.  Like LOST before it, this one takes a very non-sci-fi approach to a very sci-fi concept.  Where LOST failed, losing the thread and screwing up a promising beginning, Orphan Black rarely forgets that it's a sci-fi drama and generally sticks to its strengths, namely great acting and writing. Compelling viewing almost every minute.

Obviously, lead actress Tatiana Maslany gets the lion's share of the credit for how well this one works.  She plays something on the order of a dozen different speaking roles, including variations where she's playing one clone pretending to be another and you buy every damn minute of her performances.  She won an Emmy for one season but in my opinion deserved a whole shelf of the things for what she did in this show.  William Shatner mugging as evil Captain Kirk this ain't.

I also adore the performance of Maria Doyle Kennedy as the foster mother to the main characters of Sarah and Felix.  Badass, emotionally complex and still pretty sexy for a lady in my age group.  That accent!

Also worth the price of admission is foster brother Felix, rent-boy, con-artist, real artist and somehow the emotional and physical glue that keeps the group from spinning off into space in random directions.  You can tell actor Jordan Gavaris is having a blast playing the camp gay man with heart and charm. 

Kristian Bruun totally rocks the part of Donny, the suburban husband so whipped  he took his wife's name and rarely gets his balls out of his her purse long enough to polish 'em.  Bruun shines in a role that could easily have been lost in all the wig/make-up/accent/attitude changes Maslany makes for her one woman symphony, but he manages to crash the symbols every so often at just the right moment.

While it's a safe bet that nothing I can say about the show hasn't already been said ad nausem, I think it's worth noting that while I was singling out performances to write about, at least three of Maslany's characters popped into my head with glowing things to be said about them only for me to recall that suburban housewife Allison, Ukrainian crazed assassin Helena and out lesbian science geek Cosima are all played by one incredible woman.  I'd be surprised if anyone can watch this show for long without totally forgetting that more often than they manage to remember it.

I know my little cry from the wilderness doesn't really mean much in the scheme of shows like this but if you're reading this and haven't seen Orphan Black, it's worth your time to do so.  50 episodes isn't a huge commitment in time as these things go and it's nice to know going in that this one actually has a beginning, middle and end.  And a shit ton of clones.