ORPHAN BLACK

RATING: 8/10

“Orphan black”, the Canadian sci-fi TV series on clones, is all about identities. It features the actress Tatiana Maslany (little known before, unless you happen to be a fan of Canadian horror films) as various clones created illegally by the malevolent Dyad institute.
The story starts with the con Sarah Manning stepping off a train and then noticing a woman, who looks exactly like her, commit suicide. She assumes the woman's identity with the intention of cleaning her bank account, thinking maybe she was a long lost twin. Little did she know that the woman was just one of her clones. She later meets a handful more like the American college student, who is studying evolutionary developmental biology and is basically the science geek of the show. We have a soccer mom, a religious nut who goes off assassinating her fellow clones, and many more.
The plot sequence of “Orphan Black” is complex and has a good many twists that keep the viewer's interest going. Maslany's acting is vibrant and note-worthy. Playing more than five main characters -- some being the enemy and some, friends -- she apes different personalities quite well.
Other characters like Sarah's foster brother Felix (played by Jordan Gavaris) and her foster Mother Mrs. S (Maria Doyle Kennedy) have some traction in them too.
Even some of the characters who seem hollow at first, for example Allison, the soccer mom begin to have depth later on. True, there are flaws. The clone Sarah Manning, on whom the series revolves around, is always right about her hunches; characters meet up “coincidentally” so much that you get annoyed. But there are good parts as well like when Maslany plays one clone pretending to be another, or when she plays one clone mocking how another clone pretends to be a third clone, you have to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.
That ubiquitous notion of thinking that your whole life is being monitored by evil men is played surprisingly well. The Proletheans, who go around killing clones because they think of them as “abominations”, and the Neolutionists, who created the clones and run the Dyad Institute, are forever at each other's throats. This would be more fun to watch if that relationship between the two gets more developed in the coming episodes.
If you are the sci-fi type, give this show a try. You'll like it, I hope.