Orange Is the New Black
Netflix
I arrived a little late to the hormones-and-cockroach-fest that is Orange Is the New Black (available from 6 June). When everyone else was banging on about the first series, I was pursing my lips and imagining Prisoner: Cell Block H, only with more Botox. Then, not so long ago, I gave in and binged and – oh, my God – what a revelation it was. It’s sometimes hard to believe it’s an American series, for this is a land we never see on television. Here are lesbians, bisexuals, fat people, tattooed people, old people, disturbed people, constipated people (I don’t mean emotionally; I mean that a prison diet isn’t conducive to regular bowel movements), people without teeth (methamphetamine and dental health are, alas, total strangers) and, of course, crooked people.
They’re nearly all crooked, this being a prison drama – and I should perhaps add that you’ll wait a long time if you tune in hoping for Clive Stafford Smith to appear. Miscarriages of justice have no starring roles here. One last thing: virtually every significant character is a woman. Sometimes, you can go 30 minutes without clapping eyes on a male face.
The first season ended with Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) – who is serving a 15-month sentence for having, ten years earlier, transported money for her international drug smuggler ex-girlfriend, Alex (Laura Prepon) – losing it with a prisoner called Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning, with a mouth full of black stubs). She beat her to a pulp. Uh, oh. Had Piper gone native? (Until her conviction, she had been living a respectable life with her journalist boyfriend, Larry, in upper-middle-class New York.) More to the point, was Pennsatucky dead or alive? A cliffhanger, then.
Season two, now available in its entirety on Netflix, doesn’t put the viewer out of his or her misery straight away. We have no idea what is going on and nor does Piper. I realise I must be careful not to give too much away; perhaps your own binge is scheduled for some time hence. What I can reveal is that Piper is on the move, headed for another correctional facility. Is this connected to Pennsatucky now being in a wheelchair, or even a coffin? We shall see.
There’s a lot to admire in Orange Is the New Black. The writing is fantastic, even if it does rely heavily on flashbacks; its wisecracking rat-a-tat-tat dialogue manages to be both authentic and comically overblown. The performances are muscular and sneaky. What fascinates me most is its intimacy, the gruesome details in which its writers seem to revel. In the new season, for instance, Piper must at first share a cell with four other women, one of whom spends most of her time on the lavatory, her massive knickers round her ankles. The sound effects are revolting.
The cons’ privations and their ingenuity in getting around them are mind-boggling and repulsive. Piper was transported to the new prison by plane and just before take-off the woman next to her asked if she would like a little Vaseline because flying does so crack the lips. Where did this prisoner keep her Vaseline? Only in the shell of her ear, where she’d carefully lodged a blob ahead of being handcuffed. Yes, I know. Eew.
I’m the perfect viewer for this kind of stuff, being a neat freak on the OCD spectrum; I sit at home on my carefully plumped cushions feeling thoroughly but safely disgusted. But I don’t want to give the impression that Orange Is the New Black is without its subtleties. It is interested in why people commit crimes, whether for money or love, and it likes to nod slyly to the injustices of the world outside. The old prisoners, white of hair and flat of chest, tend to sit together, invisible to everyone else; more inmates are black or Hispanic than white; social class, it is clear, doesn’t cease to matter once the cell door is locked.
It is also apt to take the piss out of the kind of do-gooders who arrive at the facility with a load of inappropriate second-hand clothes, hoping to prepare its inmates for future job interviews. The bastard child of Sex and the City and Bad Girls, it is one of the best ways of innocently wasting a weekend I know.
Content from our partners
Related
