Category: TV

So the almighty John Oliver got his own show on HBO.

Remember when Netflix decided to make its own programming and we were all like “OMG House of Cards” or “WTF Arrested Development”!? Turns out we were all stupid idiots – because the digital station’s real ace up the sleeve was going to be “Orange is the new Black”.

A neo-snobby girl goes to women’s prison. I can forgive you for not being drawn to the pitch, because neither was I. I imagined violence, darkness and cynicism. Instead, I was greeted with warmness, humor and togetherness. What I expected was Oz – what I got was Lost.

I remember clearly, watching Lost’s excellent first season, how my perception on the survivors of Oceanic 815 changed the more I got to know them. The interrogator, the lone wolf, the abusive husband… They were all cliches waiting to be broken.

Orange is the New Black does pretty much the same thing: Characters might seem well-defined and one-dimensional at first, but they keep on surprising you. Of course, a series set in prison is the ideal backdrop for a Lostian approach (in fact, Orange even uses flashbacks liberally to great effect) – you are essentially redefined and reinvinted in prison, just like you would be on a crazy island with a smoke monster.

“Liberally”, however. And that’s the key word. Where Lost sometimes felt the weight of its crazy mythology on its shoulders, Orange feels a lot more free. There is no overarching mystery. There’s not even an exciting or thrilling plot. There’s just a bunch of really cool moments that sort of lead somewhere predictable and unimportant. Moments that can be absurd, dramatic or hilarious, but always feel heartfelt and honest. It’s no coincidence Jenji Kohan (Weeds) is behind this show. There’s a female touch to this story we see all to rarely on the male club house that is TV.

I suggest you watch this show in combination with Orphan Black. Both are excellent, both feature powerful women, and both draw from Lost’s two strengths – Orphan Black with its powerful mythology and Orange is the New Black with its great sense of character.

Hell, the shows even sound alike, so you can create hilarious sitcommy misunderstandings while you’re at it!

A gloomy laketown where people are lit on fire on a daily basis. A run-down motel where Asian sex slaves are sold. Fields upon fields of weed. And smack in the middle: The kid who will grow up to be Norman Bates – the killer from Psycho. Likes: Musicals, taxidermy, Mother.

These are the ingredients to the weird cocktail that is Bates Motel, a show acting like a prequel to Hitchcock’s classic Psycho while also trying to be an earnest teen drama. It’s like one of those “What my parents think I do” memes, with Twin Peaks locked firmly under “what I think I do” and Dawson’s Creek under “what I actually do”.

At times, it can be brilliantly creepy and produce wonderful moments like this:

You’re on the edge of your seat, you’re intrigued, your heart is pounding in your chest and you’re dying to continue on…

…Only then it does this:

And you’re like “wtf”!?

It’s the weirdest thing. One moment you have a dude killing another dude in cold blood, then you have a character trying out for a musical. The only thing keeping these trainwreck scripts together is the solid cast.  Freddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga perform wonderfully (especially Vera deserves a nod, there’s no end to the creepy slapstick she can pull off) – and more than that: They bounce off each other incestuously well.

(I can’t believe I just typed that.)

I know what you’re thinking – Bert, as a writer, shouldn’t you be a beacon of good taste? Why do you tell us about this bad show? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Don’t you want to crawl into a ditch and cower in shame!?

Well, sure, but that is besides the point. The thing about Bates Motel is: It can be strangely honest sometimes. When Norma Bates tells her son (of all people) how she was brutally molested by her brother and hit on the leg with a red-hot iron, it’s so over the top it’s both tragic and hilarious. And somehow realistic. Yet nobody in their right mind would tell this to their 17 year-old son, especially knowing said son is probably a serial killer. Especially not with the iron cherry on the cake.

But here’s the thing: No one on this show is in their right mind. There’s only one character who doesn’t have a therapeutic issue and, guess what, they gave her a deadly lung disease.

So why do I watch Bates Motel? Because for all the schizophrenia this show is damn consistent.

Imagine you are waiting for the train. Suddenly, in front of you, you notice a person looking a little off. As the train rolls into the station this person turns around and looks at you. Shock sets on your face as you realize she looks exactly like you.

And then she jumps in front of the train.

That’s the premise to Orphan Black, a BBC america production starring Tatiana Maslany in half of its many roles as the woman who keeps discovering more and more of her own clones. She plays a con artist. A cop. A neurotic soccer mom. A biology nerd. A neurotic soccer mom posing as a con artist. A con artist posing as a cop. And a serial killer.

It’s one of the absurdest pieces of sci-fi I’ve seen in a while, yet it’s also strangely relatable, largely due to a solid script that takes the absurdity of the premise with just the right amount of seriousness and a great performance by its entire cast – but most of all by Maslany, who is undoubtedly cast in the roles of a lifetime.

Personally, I’m so happy to finally see another good sci-fi show, one that’s entertaining, geeky but still relatable and hella exciting. It’s got the absurd mystery of LOST but none of its bloated sense of self-importance. It’s got the weirdness of Fringe but none of its boring detective structure. And it’s got the complexity of Heroes but none of its terribly stupid and badly written characters. Orphan Black manages to back its characters into the craziest corners and then finds exciting ways to get them out of them – all while keeping true to the quirks and quips of the fascinating people inhabiting its world. Throughout the first season, it goes to outrageous lengths to surprise you – yet always grounds itself in its colourful characters.

If you want the TV equivalent of a pageturner with crazy twists and some of the most awesome bait and switch scenes ever, you should give this a try. Or, you know, you could watch something boring instead.

When you spend your day writing, all of a sudden something weird can happen: You watch fictional people lose babies, limbs or each other and you just shrug it off cynically.

You start to hate stories.

My last couple of weeks were riddled by another one of these phases. Quite honestly: They’re destructive towards your work. How can you enjoy your own stuff if you can’t enjoy anything at all?

Then, I watched Shameless. Like, all of it. In one weekend. I laughed, I cried, I realized there’s nothing quite like this quaint show about lower class people in Chicago trying to make something of their lives, featuring the magnificent William H. Macy and a dozen crazily gifted child actors. It’s deeply hilarious, truly sad and politically correct all over. I loved it. I adored it.

I wanted to make it.

Take a look at these two scenes. They are from the same show. How is that even possible!?

And, just like that, my phase was cured. By realizing that otherwise, I would never be able to make something as magnificent as Shameless.

So I urge you: Watch this show. It’s truly unique.