Orange Is The New Black (Season 5)

There's a fascinating irony found in the latest season (and its predecessor) of Junji Kohan's sprawling prison drama Orange Is The New Black. For a show made purposefully for a binge-watching market its story arcs can be agonisingly glacial. Set over a four-day prison riot, the show's pace is almost in real time, but a great deal of this is devoted to exposition, to the point of being wantonly sluggish.

Ironic this may be, but it's also a big risk. From the relatively simple concept of a middle-class anti-heroine wading into the murky socio-economic depths of Litchfield Penitentiary, the show has since spun its yarns into a mind-bogglingly complex tangle of subplots, flashbacks, and origin stories spanning a vast cast of motley misfits. In terms of its density, this isn't unprecedented - Game Of Thrones being the most familiar example of a large ensemble cast. However, where Orange Is The New Black differs (aside from the lack of dragons, iron thrones, and incest) is that each of its characters' stories exists in a vaguely similar emotional spectrum, and the cumulative effect can occasionally read as white noise.

And then there's the comedy. In and of itself, the toilet humour and quirky character gags are not necessarily out of place - indeed, it's matching the tone set in the first season. But as the show's narratives have become darker, as it's explored the horrors of abuse, neglect, drug addiction and mental illness, its jokes have become increasingly jarring alongside the heft of its subject matter.

Or so I thought until I had watched the season to the very end. Perceived flaws in its tone, in its pacing, in its lumbering self-indulgences are revealed as surgically precise decisions that guide our empathy to a heart-stopping climax. It's a slight of hand that leaves the viewer feeling both duped and grateful. This is storytelling on an operatic scale, and could very well be the natural evolution of binge brand TV. Finally, we have a show that dares to ask as much of its audience as we ask of it.