Tuesday, July 23, 2013

"I threw my pie for you."

I follow a lot of entertainment-related people on my Twitter account. I also tend to follow people that I agree with so, sometimes my perception of what the majority of people are actually watching and enjoying is a little skewed. From my Facebook feed, it seems like most of my friends have not yet discovered my two new favorite shows so I thought I would try to change that, especially considering those same friends compose the majority of my readers.

Over the past month, my Twitter timeline has been a constant love-fest for new shows Orphan Black on BBC America and Orange Is The New Black on Netflix. I was not initially planning to watch either, but I could not ignore the loud voices telling me how amazing these shows are and I am very glad that I gave into the peer pressure. They were right and you should all be watching them as well.

While it was actually airing, I had only seen a few posts here and there about Orphan Black but again, mostly from entertainment writers and bloggers and mostly from the same few people. However, after hearing about Tatiana Maslany for four days straight at this year's ATX Television Festival, I decided I should probably see what everyone was talking about.

The pilot starts with a woman named Sarah Manning standing on a train platform when she sees another woman who looks exactly like her jump in front of a train. Sarah steals this woman's purse and identity and plans to clean out her bank account before leaving town with her own daughter and foster brother. However, she soon discovers that there is much more to this woman, Beth Childs, and their identical appearance than she first thought and she soon meets Katja, Alison, Cosima and Helena. They are all clones and are trying to figure out where they came from.

Maslany plays all of the clones and is absolutely fantastic. You forget that the same actress is playing all of these characters because they look and act and sound so different. It is rather remarkable. I had only ever seen her in one episode of Flashpoint and she was great in that small role but, after watching this show, it is baffling to me that she has managed to stay under the radar until now.


The rest of the cast is equally fantastic and includes Jordan Gavaris, Dylan Bruce, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Kevin Hanchard, Michael Mando, Skyler Wexler, Inga Cadranel and Matt Frewer.

The second season unfortunately does not come out until April 2014 but, luckily for you, the first season DVDs were just released! That means you have plenty of time to catch up on this amazing show!