Orphan Black: a worthy heir to Buffy's crown

Spoiler alert: this blogpost discusses events to date in Orphan Black. Viewers in the US please be aware you are one episode ahead of British viewers.

In the decade since Buffy The Vampire Slayer ended with a new generation of slayers heading out to take over the world, there have been many pretenders to Ms Summers' crown. Some, such as Veronica Mars, have been worthy contenders, combining tight plotting with strong characterisation and witty dialogue; others, such as the lamentable Ringer, proved that simply casting Sarah Michelle Gellar as the lead (twice over) isn't enough.

The latest claimant to Buffy's crown, however, promises to be the greatest. Canadian sci-fi drama Orphan Black is not only a showcase for the phenomenal acting talent of its leading lady, the previously little-known Tatiana Maslany, it's also one of the best (and most underrated) shows on television.

When it first began last year, the buzz was muted. The basic premise – a British con artist sees a lookalike kill herself in an unnamed North American city (the show is filmed in Toronto) and steals her life, only to get drawn into a wider conspiracy after discovering that she and the suicide, a police officer, are both clones – was interesting and cleverly laid out, but not especially original. In 2009, Joss Whedon had come up with a similar idea in the short-lived Dollhouse starring Eliza Dushku, AKA Buffy's dark slayer, Faith.

But while Dollhouse and Orphan Black share a premise and a similar preoccupation with the battle between science and religion, that's where the comparisons should end. Whedon's creation was high-octane fluff, hampered by Dushku's inability to truly differentiate her clones, and lacking the wit that marks his best work.

Orphan Black, by comparison, is not only anchored by a star-making turn from Maslany (who at this point in season two is playing five living clones, often three in the same scene, without ever making you doubt their individuality), it's also willing to mix up the tone. We jump from lighter moments between Sarah and her foster brother Felix (the excellent Jordan Gavaris), to serious debates about the ethics of cloning and nurture versus nature. There's even a Giles-esque mentor figure (albeit an often estranged one) in the shape of Sarah and Felix's compassionate but tough foster mother, Mrs S, an Irish woman with a past as a political activist and more secrets than she lets on.

Like Buffy, Orphan Black is also happy to experiment. OK, so there's not likely to be a musical episode like the infamous Once More, With Feeling any time soon, but Orphan Black plays with the conventions of police procedurals, piling twist upon twist to ensure that nobody can be trusted, and is stuffed full of clever conceits: the episode titles for the first series are all taken from Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, those for series two are drawn from the works of Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, essayist and inventor of the scientific method.

That knowing tone should come as no surprise to anyone who loved co-creator John Fawcett's teen werewolf movie Ginger Snaps, which managed to be terrifying and darkly funny. The show's other writer Graeme Manson was previously best known for cult shocker Cube, a disturbingly off-kilter film about five strangers trapped in the cube of the title, and it's easy to see elements of both men's previous work in Orphan Black. For this is a drama that's never content with the obvious answer, preferring instead to throw up more questions – most notably concerning the clones' monitors, who are part-helper/part-spy and not always who you (or the clones) might expect.

With the second series halfway through, we have learned more about the two opposing sides – The Dyad Institute, which is apparently searching for evolutionary perfection, and the Proletheans, a group of religious fanatics who believe all clones are bad – and watched as laid-back scientist clone Cosima attempts to uncover the truth behind the illness that has struck down a number of her sisters.

But it has also become clear that it's not as simple as one side good, other side bad, or even both sides bad, clones stuck in the middle. Instead, this is a world where no one is safe, and everyone lies, where survival is key and each character is capable of doing bad or good depending on the situation.

And that blurring of the lines is never more obvious than when dealing with the show's redoubtable anti-heroine. While it's fascinating spending time with super-smart scientist Cosima, surprisingly kick-ass "soccer mom" Alison and even poor, lost, ultraviolent Helena, raised from birth to be a killing machine, it's Sarah, con artist, thief, user and abuser of both family and friends, who is nominally our heroine. And it's to the show's credit that it never sands away her flaws, ensuring that even as we root for her to uncover the truth about the aptly named Leda Project we're also aware that she's frequently reprehensible and often plain wrong.

That refusal to soften Sarah's edges is ultimately what makes Orphan Black such a worthy heir to Buffy's crown. It is heart-stoppingly addictive television, but what raises it from good to must-see is its array of complex and complicated heroines, all of whom we want to survive despite understanding that they are facing increasingly impossible odds.