Orphan Black

A head-spinning, yet deeply humane, thrill ride.

It is, flat out, one of the most intriguingly entertaining new series of the year, and it’s so much more than pure entertainment. For a sci-fi series, there’s some real heft to it.

As Sarah makes one shocking discovery after another, Orphan Black weaves an increasingly intricate, suspenseful tale.

[A] gritty, visceral, and emotionally engaging thriller.

Orphan Black begins with a solid, well-constructed, one-hour pilot that breezily introduces the characters and the show's conceit. It does allow some questions to linger, but it won't leave viewers scratching their heads in confusion, an important distinction and a balance not all genre shows are capable of getting right.

Funky, freaky and fascinating, Orphan deserves to be adopted by any pulp-fantasy fan.

Orphan Black has the potential to be memorable entertainment, if they [creators Graeme Manson and John Fawcett] can continue to deliver each and every plot development with a human touch.

The mystery is wonderfully intriguing; the performances are excellent, especially from Maslany but also from Jordan Gavaris as her foster brother and best friend, Felix.

Basically, it's fun: creepy when it needs to be, light when it can be (which is more often than you'd expect, given the life and death stakes), doesn't look too cheap (it has an easier time than "Copper," in that it doesn't have to recreate an earlier time period).

An intriguing new series.

By the end of the second episode, this tasty show starts to reveal that it is not just another identity-swapping story. Something creepily sci-fi is definitely going on.

Orphan Black has the same plain club soda flavor you get in most cable action dramas now, but I have to say that I’m enjoying some of its fizz.

It's just as ridiculous as it sounds, chockablock with clichés, predictable exposition (two taps of the keyboard and entire histories are revealed) and some fairly whacked-out plot twists. But it doesn't matter because Orphan Black isn't so much about plot as it is performance, and as the series continues, the performances are pretty astonishing.

The beginnings of answers do appear by the end of the episode, and they are definitely compelling enough to encourage continued viewing.

It takes a bit longer than it should for the viewer to assemble a working knowledge of the show's core mystery, and there are some tonal issues (some attempts at jokey moments are a bit jarring), but overall, Orphan Black is a quite watchable thriller that plunges its heroine into a murky world that almost seems designed to drive her mad.

The settings never seem authentic for the Big Apple, and accents veer like partygoers after last call.... Still, Maslany shows skill in her many alternate guises, and the show has a dark sense of humor.

Orphan Black is a cool, clever show, and I don’t discount the possibility that it could become great, or at least excellent; but for now, both its tone and its premise seem worrisomely limited.

Aside from the performances by Maslany, especially, and Gavaris, who gets some of the show's best lines, it takes until the third and fourth episodes for Orphan Black to start growing on you.