What would you do if you saw someone who looked exactly like you, down to the last molecule, and then that person died in front of you? That’s what happens to Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) in the perfect pilot episode of Orphan Black that premiered in 2013. The neo-noir science fiction adventure ran for five seasons and still, to this day, is in a league of its own.
You really had to be there in 2013. The popularity of the show grew through word-of-mouth, which seems to rarely happen these days. It was the kind of show you wanted people to watch without knowing anything beforehand. Just sit back and get obsessed. The growing audience and attention lead to more and more favorable reviews as critics took note, as well as a group of fans that called themselves the #CloneClub and a yearly outcry over the fact that Maslany hadn’t won an Emmy yet. It really was a phenomenon.
‘Orphan Black’ Hit the Ground Running in Season 1, Episode 1
As stated above, the de facto protagonist of the series, a scammer named Sarah, watches her doppelgänger die by suicide in the first episode of the series. Sarah decides to seize the tragic opportunity and swap identities with this mystery woman, whose name is Beth Childs. She arranges for her foster brother Felix (Jordan Gavaris) to identify the dead body as her own and attempts to withdraw money from Beth’s bank account. There are only about a dozen problems, however. Beth turns out to be a police detective under investigation for shooting a fellow officer. Sarah’s daughter, Kira (Skyler Wexler), can’t find out that she’s dead, or she might lose custody. Beth’s hot husband Paul (Dylan Bruce) is still in her life. At the end of the Orphan Black pilot, another doppelgänger called Katja appears and dies before they even get to exchange pleasantries. This isn’t a coincidence: it’s a full-blown conspiracy.
Sarah soon discovers that she is one of several clones. As the season progresses, we meet a Type A soccer mom named Alison and a laid-back nerdy scientist named Cosima. There’s also Helena, a clone who has been radicalized and may/may not be on a killing spree. All of them, of course, are played by Maslany in addition to Sarah. Those four are the main clones, but don’t worry… many more show up.
As the show goes on, secrets upon secrets about the organization that created these clones and why unfold at a rapid and addictive pace that hooked even non-fans of the genre. Orphan Black struck a perfect tonal balance. It was action-packed, light, and entertaining while pushing the boundaries of what we know about nature, nurture, and family. Since all of these characters share the same DNA, the show could pose questions about personality, sexuality, and what makes us individuals.
Maslany’s Performance on ‘Orphan Black’ Is Untouchable
The reason fans successfully begged their friends and family to watch Orphan Black was that they were eager to share how Maslany completely transforms as each clone. Wigs and accents helped, for sure, but the actress mastered body language and microexpressions that distinguished her characters. Early on in Season 1, the writers utilized “one clone pretends to be another clone” as a narrative device, and it really works well. For example, the audience could easily tell the difference between Sarah, Alison, and Alison pretending to be Sarah. It’s never hard to follow, and impressive that Maslany pulled it off.
Maslany was finally nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2015, and won in 2016. (Her performance was also nominated for a Golden Globe, once, in 2014 and never again. Same story with the Screen Actor’s Guild award in 2015.) This came to the glee of fans who’d resigned themselves to the belief that science fiction and/or fantasy performances would never get taken seriously enough to win major trophies. Little did they know a show called Game of Thrones was just about to enter its Emmy domination era.
Even the ‘Orphan Black’ Spin-off Couldn’t Capture the Magic
In 2024, AMC tried and failed to hook fans with a futuristic sequel series. Orphan Black: Echoes starred Krysten Ritter as a woman named Lucy with no memory of her past life. Guess what? She’s part of a new type of cloning project. The series brought back Gavaris’ Felix and Cosima’s girlfriend and eventual wife, Delphine (Evelyne Brochu), from the original series to hook Clone Club members. Keeley Hawes played a grown-up version of Kira, too. On paper, that sounds like good grounds for a spin-off. But the magic was gone.
There has yet to be a worthy Orphan Black successor or even a decent copycat on television. Few actors who play multiple roles in a project are as transformative as Maslany. Dollhouse got close with Eliza Dushku and the supporting cast of “dolls” who take on various identities, but it preceded Orphan Black and was cancelled after two seasons. The same goes for United States of Tara, a show about a woman (Toni Collette) dealing with dissociative identity disorder. The closest we’ve come since is probably that one episode of NBC’s The Good Place where D’Arcy Carden played multiple versions of her own character, Janet, as well as the entire main cast of characters.
The fact that Orphan Black had a science fiction premise that was just realistic enough to be grounded and unrealistic enough to be melodramatic, helped a lot. They could really have fun with this story. (For what it’s worth, the early 00s show called Kyle XY never went this far with its own clone narrative.) Plus, even though almost all of them were played by the same person, having a science fiction series with so many complex female characters was gratifying in 2013. And like so many successful shows, especially in the science fiction and fantasy genre, the ensemble formed a found/chosen family. We have plenty of shows with those individual draws now, but still not something quite like Orphan Black.
- Release Date
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2013 – 2017
- Network
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Space, BBC America
- Showrunner
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Graeme Manson
- Directors
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Ken Girotti, T.J. Scott, David Wellington, Grant Harvey, Helen Shaver, Aaron Morton, Brett Sullivan, Chris Grismer, Peter Stebbings
- Writers
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Aubrey Nealon, Karen Walton, Tony Elliott, Peter Mohan, Sherry White, Jeremy Boxen, Kate Miles Melville, Greg Nelson, Jenn Engels, Nikolijne Troubetzkoy
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Sarah / Cosima / Alison / Helena / Rachel
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Jordan Gavaris
Felix ‘Fee’ Dawkins
