After 77 episodes, Lost
Girl concluded with its fifth season. As this is the last we'll hear of it,
I'll repeat some of the comments I've made before.
Lost
Girl is a
contemporary urban fantasy featuring Bo Dennis (Anna Silk) a bisexual young
woman who is rather different from human. By touching other people she can make
them do whatever she wishes; by having sex with them she feeds on their life
force and kills them – usually unintentionally, but she can't help herself. She
lives a nomadic life, forever moving on and leaving a trail of victims behind.
At the beginning of the series she rescues Kenzi Malikov (Ksenia Solo), a
streetwise young thief, from a rapist. The two become friends and partners. But
Bo has come to the attention of other non-humans and discovers that she is a
succubus – a member of a population of Fae with varied supernatural powers
living as normal people.
Bo learns
that the Fae are divided into light and dark factions and, after passing a
test, she is expected to join one of them. She refuses to choose and sets up as
a private investigator in partnership with Kenzi. She forms a liaison with
werewolf Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) who works as a police detective; she
discovers that she can have sex with him without killing him, and that by doing
so she can rapidly recover from any injuries. Her principal aim – and a plot
thread running through the first season – is to discover her origin, as she was
abandoned as a baby and given to human parents to bring up.
As well as
the common threads running through the series, each episode contains a self-contained
story. These vary considerably in nature (but usually involve some Dark Fae or
other supernatural being causing problems), keeping the viewers interested.
Season 4 started on an unusual note, the succubus heroine Bo
being nowhere to be seen, and none of the other characters apparently noticing
her absence. The spell gradually breaks down and the characters take action to
recover their lost memories before searching for Bo. The main thread in rest of
the season concerns why Bo, previously determinedly refusing to join the Light
or the Dark Fae but with leanings towards the Light, has apparently joined the
Dark during her absence – something she cannot recall and refuses to accept.
There are lots of other novelties including a mysterious train
which appears to contain the secret to her disappearance; the formidable Una
Mens; Fae with a range of strange new powers; humans pretending to be Fae; a
prominent Fae being turned into a human, and the departure of two of the
principal characters in dramatic fashion.
The final season has more new characters and threats to be
faced by our depleted band of heroes, particularly Bo's father, revealed at
last. It wraps up the story neatly enough and has an ending which is satisfying
without being over-emotional.
To sum up; this series is an original and entertaining
fantasy, often amusing, sufficiently varied to retain interest, and heavy on
interpersonal emotions and LGB relationships. As I concluded in a previous review; it has no
pretensions to being anything other than engaging (if rather silly) light
entertainment – at which it succeeds very well.
************
Orphan Black is a
darker, science-fiction, story concerned with secret human cloning. It is based on a novel premise: Sarah
Manning (played by Tatiana Maslany) is a young woman who is down on her luck
when she meets her double, who turns out to be genetically identical. When her
double dies, Sarah takes over her life. Then she meets another double, and
another, and realizes that they are all clones. This is a constantly intriguing
and frequently amusing drama as the clones try to figure out their history
while being faced with an acute danger – someone is trying to kill them. By the
end of the first season, it becomes clear that being hunted is only one of
their problems; they are also under covert observation and their future hangs
by a thread. Maslany has great fun playing the various, and very varied, clones
and the constantly evolving plot gripped my attention from the start, with one
unexpected twist after another.
The next
season sees various additional threats facing the clone sisters, not least a
lethal genetic illness: the efforts to find a cure to this become the principal
plot thread thereafter.
The third
season features the emergence of a second line of clones – this time men
(played by Ari Millen) – providing more complications for the band of
"sisters" as they try to find a way out of their multiple problems,
with competing organisations taking an uncomfortably close interest in them.
The drama is as good as ever, as is Maslany whose performance has rightly won
awards (including an Emmy very recently). Her pony-tailed Alison made me smile
every time she appeared – a wonderful portrayal of an obsessively conventional
suburban "soccer mom" who develops criminal tendencies and of course
does her best to justify them. As the tension increases in the first few
episodes of this season, the dark humour which previously added to the
entertainment is scaled down, although the seventh episode switches mood and
returns to the original form, with a lot of laugh-out-loud scenes (mostly
involving Alison, naturally). The finale sees the core of the mystery of the
sisters' origins revealed and some problems solved – but others still lie
ahead.
The fourth
season is the most confusing of all, as it hops around the timeline without any
warning. The first episode jumps back to before the beginning of Season 1,
revealing what drove Beth the detective to commit suicide (the event which
kicked off the whole series), and subsequent episodes keep returning to this
time or slightly afterwards, filling in the story with a lot more detail. These
scenes alternate with those showing the latest developments, keeping the viewer
alert in order to stay on top of what is going on. There are new villains to
deal with, in the form of Evie Cho (Jessalyn Wanlim) the head of the
organisation responsible for the cloning programme, and a police detective
under her control.
The finale of
Season 4 is packed with the unexpected. I have no wish to spoil anyone’s
enjoyment, but if you expect a nice, cosy, conclusion, you’d better brace
yourself. I was under the impression that this fourth season was the last, so
was shocked by the ending, but fortunately another season is coming along next
year!
Overall, the result is a multi-layered, constantly
developing and gripping plot which puts Orphan Black among the very best
SF series. What makes this so entertaining is that, while it certainly isn't a
comedy, there is enough humour in it to balance the drama.
