Netflix is steaming ahead with its original programming, adding “Orange Is the New Black” to their catalogue. Created by “Weeds” creator ” Jenji Kohan, “Orange” is based on the real-life memoir of Piper Chapman, a woman in her thirties who is sentenced to a 15 month prison term when she is caught transporting money for her drug-dealing girlfriend. Taylor Schilling is quite good as the white-bread, educated girl who winds up in jail, but it is the ensemble that really makes this series sing.
Pablo Schreiber (half-brother to Liev) plays a most despicable prison guard, Kate Mulgrew is cast as a Russian convict who runs the prison kitchen, Laura Prepon plays the aforementioned girlfriend and Jason Biggs of “American Pie” fame plays Piper’s bewildered fiancee. The inmates are a kaleidoscope of characters; “Crazy Eyes,” played by Uzo Aduba, a woman who decides Piper is going to be her new prison wife, Taryn Manning portraying a Bible-banging red-neck named “Pennsatucky,” and Michelle Hurst cast as Miss Claudette, Piper’s roommate, among others. The show explores issues of race, gender, religion and morality, but in a most entertainly subversive way. May there be a Season 2, and soon.
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