Orphan Black Is My Ultimate Comfort Rewatch for Dark Times

There’s something inherently slippery about the term “comfort watch.” Maybe it brings to mind your favorite sitcom, like The Office, or your favorite family saga, like Gilmore Girls. But comfort is so subjective—what comforts you certainly might not comfort me. In politically fraught times like these, we tend to take comfort wherever we can find it, which is why I’m fascinated by the question of which television shows people find comforting and why.

I’m always doing deep dives on social media into what makes the perfect comfort show, and while many of us tend to flock to the same types of shows, the answer never seems to be the same, of course, because each person is different. The series that I most often find myself turning to for comfort is neither a workplace comedy or a quirky dramedy set in a town where it always seems to be autumn. For me, it’s a show about personal autonomy and biomedical ethics: Orphan Black.

I didn’t grow up watching Star Wars or Star Trek, and because of that, I never thought of myself as being a particular fan of science fiction… until I happened to stumble randomly onto Orphan Black for the first time on a Canadian television network circa 2014, and I couldn’t stop watching. It wasn’t even a question of wanting to watch—it was a need to know what happens next. Over five seasons (just 50 episodes, total), Orphan Black keeps upping the stakes and ratcheting up the tension—you’ll find yourself thinking “…and the plot thickens!” again and again, right up until the very last plot twist to end all plot twists.

It’s hard to resist serialized storytelling, especially when it’s done well—and, honestly, sometimes even when it’s not. Orphan Black is not a soap opera, but its ability to weave together a large cast of characters (most of whom are played by one actress) and intersecting storylines brings to mind any primetime soap of the last two decades. Moreover, the series expertly combines its science fiction elements with high-stakes melodrama that is so engrossing, it will draw you in whether you’re already a fan of sci-fi or only have a passing acquaintance with the genre. As with any great story, you just have to be a fan of viscerally compelling storytelling and the human experience.

Orphan Black centers on a group of human female clones—all, somehow, masterfully played by Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany—created under the guise of Project Leda: they were all, except for one, unaware of their status as clones, born to mothers via in-vitro fertilization in the year 1984. The series is largely filtered through the perspective of tough, rebellious Sarah Manning, who stumbles upon the conspiracy in the pilot episode. Her need to find the truth drives her descent into a shadowy scientific underworld where the ethics of biotechnology are either ignored or twisted beyond recognition. Sarah’s journey of discovery is a masterclass in television screenwriting, which in turn introduces the main supporting cast of clones. They include (but are not limited to) PhD student Cosima Niehaus, suburban mom Alison Hendrix, the mysterious and ever-elusive Helena, and manipulative antagonist Rachel Duncan.

Adhering to the first rule of Clone Club feels simple at first—don’t talk about Clone Club—but it becomes increasingly impossible to do as the walls close in on the Leda clones with each passing episode. They aren’t alone in their journeys, however, as each of the main clones we follow has the support of loved ones who are grappling with their own experiences as a result of this strange twist in their lives. Sarah has her foster brother Felix Dawkins (Jordan Gavaris) who often provides comic relief, as well as her young daughter, Kira (Skyler Wexler), and her foster mother Siobhan Sadler (Maria Doyle Kennedy), Cosima enters into a relationship with fellow scientist and double agent Delphine Cormier (Evelyne Brochu), and together they serve as the romantic center of the series. Alison is married with two adopted children—the Leda clones were designed to be infertile, which leads to the the dangerous puzzle of why Sarah was able to reproduce—and her initially tempestuous relationship with her husband Donnie (Kristian Bruun) grows stronger in unexpected ways the further entrenched he becomes in Clone Club. These three core characters also deal with their own individual struggles as they grapple with these unexpected revelations and mysteries: Cosima suffers from an unknown disease plaguing the clones, Alison struggles with sobriety in her attempts to cope, and Sarah is frustrated and angry at finding out that her entire life has been a lie. The emotional hook of Orphan Black is not the bizarre science and unethical behavior that led to the creation of human clones, but the human beings whose lives are affected in very real ways as a result of the coming face to face, repeatedly, with the unthinkable.

But these aren’t necessarily the reasons that Orphan Black remains one of my go-to comfort shows. On top of being compulsively watchable, there’s something unique about its tone that few other shows have been able to replicate. (The only other example that comes to mind is Alias, an action-thriller series that also began to borrow elements from the science fiction genre, but in different ways and for different reasons.) On top of taking place in Canada—where I’m from, so I have the fun of recognizing certain familiar locations over the course of the series—Orphan Black prioritizes not just the stories of women, but those of queer people and other marginalized groups. On a show where human beings have been successfully cloned, and several competing factions—from religious zealots to the military to a shadowy cult of scientists, all driven by different motives—are out to claim and control the clones and the process that created them, the idea of holding onto one’s sense of personal identity is an overriding theme throughout every season. And who better to understand the complexities of that theme, and the stakes involved, than queer people?

As a result of its high-risk storytelling, the female clone characters often only have each other to rely on, along with their small band of allies. Who else, in a twisted world that created your personhood in a lab, is going to understand the battle you’re going through to secure rights to your own bodily autonomy? As a result, Orphan Black—both the series and the extreme loyal fanbase it engendered—was deeply rooted in the notion of outsiders coming together and building community amongst like-minded people. Orphan Black managed to create a shelter for outcasts, both within the series and in the fandom that grew up around it. So many of us sometimes feel alone in what we think or feel, and coming together with friends who will share and sympathize with our experiences and point of view is vital—both for the clones on the series, and for real-life humans watching them.

But some real-life humans might be quiet, mischievous introverts like myself who don’t always enjoy finding community in the outside world, which is why we so often turn to the Internet to find our people. Do you know how healing it can be to find your people, so to speak, in the fictional characters on a television series? I’m sure many of you do. For me, Orphan Black resonates so strongly, checking so many boxes—both when it originally aired and every time I’ve rewatched it since then: soapy yet serious drama that asks thoughtful questions about identity and human rights, complex queer characters with heart and soul, and outsiders finding community on the margins. The series managed to create such loveable, flawed characters that are so easily misunderstood, but as long as the right person is watching them, they are going to be rooted for, identified with, and loved.

I’ve seen Orphan Black from start to finish more times than I can count, and I most often find myself turning to the show when I need a break, an escape—something to take me out of my head. Because of the aforementioned serialized storytelling, it’s very much a “blink and you will miss something important” type of show. Orphan Black is not a series you put on as background noise while absentmindedly scrolling through Instagram. It’s a show you must devote your full attention to, not only for it to achieve its desired effect, but so that you do not miss a single minute of dialogue. Thus, at times when I’ve felt at odds with whatever’s going on in my life or the outside world (or both) and I need something to take me out of it for a time, Orphan Black is the perfect show to start rewatching from the beginning. From the first moment Sarah steps off that train and confronts a mirror image of herself in the pilot episode, I know I’m about to embark on a journey that will make me feel deeply, even if I’ve seen it a hundred times over.

That’s the great thing about shows that require such a level of hyper-focus: even if you’re devoting all your energy to watching it, you’re bound to miss something and probably forget certain details by the next time you start over. I could watch Orphan Black countless times, and yet I’d still need to have just watched it to satisfactorily explain the nuance and specificities of certain plot details to someone else. I have an eidetic memory and the television shows I love usually imprint on me very easily, but I cannot remember every single solitary twist and turn of some aspects of Orphan Black. I can get sick of some series I love because I’ve seen them too many times, to the point that I can recite them from another room, but Orphan Black just isn’t that kind of show—it’s too layered, too intricate. You can find something new to appreciate about it no matter how many times you watch, while also having it feel reassuringly familiar.

In 2025, when there is no shortage of upheaval, tension, and existential dread in our daily lives, a series like Orphan Black that examines the very nature of identity and autonomy can also be seen as particularly timely: we might not have human clones fighting for their bodily rights in real life, but real-life women sure are fighting for their right to bodily autonomy, at the same time trans and nonbinary people are fighting for their basic right to exist. The clones on Orphan Black lose as many times as they win, but they never stop fighting for themselves and for each other, as long as their lives and identities are on the line. In a world where increasing political authoritarianism seeks to blur and erase the lines around fundamental human rights, Orphan Black is a sharp, comforting reminder that persisting in the fight to exist, to be ourselves, and to control our fate is not only a necessity for us, but for the future of our kind.[end-mark]

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