This show is brilliant (warning: sort-of spoiler in first sentence (!)), and it seems to have flown entirely below everyone's radar. Tatiana Maslany plays a streetwise career criminal, Sarah Manning, who steps off a train in a nameless American city to watch dumbounded as a crying woman who looks exactly like her throws herself under a train. She steals the woman's purse and the plot unfolds from there.
It's a sci-fi thriller with some snappy one liners -- closer to Buffy in tone than anything else, really. Outstanding acting from the lead who turns in an Alias-like performance playing different characters and accents; she's impressively chameleon like, with only subtle body language clues enough to clearly let you know which character she's playing.
Some great supporting actors too; her metrosexual gay foster brother Jordan Gavaris steals most of the best lines, and there's a recurring role from Michael Mando (Vaas from Far Cry 3!) as Maslany's abusive boyfriend. And I hope for great things in the future from Kevin Hanchard, a down-at-the-mouth homicide detective with a mysterious relationship to Maslany's character.
The show doesn't initially spell out its premise, so if you're spoiler-adverse, don't read this: but without saying this bit, I can't talk about the show at all. You'll probably suspect this by the end of the first episode and it's outright confirmed by the third anyway, so it's no big secret.
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
You quickly uncover that Maslany is one of a series of clones, and that someone or is trying to wipe them out; the clones have an underground organisation trying to figure out who made them, and why, and to stay alive. Hence Maslany's multiple roles, including a streetwise hustler, a soccer mom, a gay research scientist, a homicide detective.
There's plenty of amusing moments mined from fish-out-of-water scenes where one clone has to pretend to be another for various reasons. A suburban potluck lunch with two different clones and side characters from three different clone's lives all running around mistaking one clone for another is a memorable highlight for the show as a whole.
The plot twists and turns at a decent clip and is put together like a precision engineered watch; you're not going to see all of the crosses-and-doubles-crosses coming, for sure. And yet for me it never put a foot wrong with characterisation; you're never left thinking that someone did something that was inconsistent with what you know about them for the sake of advancing the plot -- which is refreshing for a glossy TV show these days. Lots of stuff that doesn't seem remarkable in early episodes takes on new significance in light of developments later on, and some moments that seemed out of place turn out to be perfectly explained by something you just didn't know yet.
The first episode is a wee bit generic and a little bit underwhelming (in particular, you may find Maslany's Londaaaahn accent distracting) but stick with it because it all starts to take off from the second episode onwards. Once it gathers momentum, it doesn't let up until the end -- be prepared to binge-watch if it gets under your skin.
It's ten episodes long and already confirmed for a second season. It's my favourite new show of the last year, I think.
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