Orphan Black

So back when Doctor Who season 7.2/7.5/whatever you want to call it where JLC shows up for good premiered, this TV show - about clones, who discover they're clones - premiered right afterwards. I watched it, and it seemed interesting, but it didn't hold my interest enough to watch the next week's episode.

Sometime after all the season finales, though, I ran out of new things to watch and gave this show a second try. And wow, was it worth it.

The basic plot is that our main character (and almost always our POV character) Sarah is a small-time criminal and deadbeat single mom, and one night she sees a woman who looks just like her commit suicide in the subway. At that point, she decides that the logical thing to do is to pick up that woman's bag and heels and take over her identity or at least her bank accounts. Then, she ends up discovering that this woman's life isn't magically perfect - in fact, both Sarah and the dead woman, Beth, are members of a group of clones that's being killed off.

Admittedly, the first three or four episodes are a bit slow. But sometime around episode six people outside of their little circle start discovering their secrets, sh#t really hits the fan, and this series becomes incredibly addictive. And the supporting characters are great, too: Beth's partner, Art, and the forensic tech, and her boyfriend, Paul; Allison's husband; Cosima's French friend Delphine; Sarah's foster mom, her biological daughter, Kira, and my absolute favorite of all, her flamboyantly gay foster brother and co-conspirator, Felix.

And that Emmy buzz surrounding Tatiana Maslany? She completely deserves it. At times, I completely forget it's the same actress playing all those characters - apparently, there's supposed to be nine clones that Cosima has tracked down "so far", but so far I've only counted six that I've seen on-screen (Sarah, Beth, The German/Jane Doe, Allison, Cosima, and Helena). The amazing part isn't just how she plays Sarah or Allison or Cosima - it's how she also perfectly manages the complexities of one clone trying to be another. A less skilled actress, if she played Sarah and Allison, for example, and suddenly was faced with the role of Sarah pretending to be Allison, might simply play that role the same way she plays Allison, whereas with Maslany's performance we still know that it's Sarah we're watching.

Although nothing will fill the gap that Fringe has left in my heart and schedule, this is definitely satiating my desire for brainy weird scifi! (Also, this makes keeping track of a different versions of each character in each of 2 universes in each of 2 timelines, plus one universe in a future timeline, look simple!)