Two ambitious ensemble dramas début this summer, each set in a colorful criminal milieu. Permit me to be direct: one of them is terrific. The other you’ll probably want to skip, unless you have a serious thing for Liev Schreiber cradling a baseball bat.
First, the good. “Orange Is the New Black” is the latest release from Netflix, which is quickly establishing itself as a real rival to cable. Smart, salty, and outrageous, the series falls squarely in the tradition of graphic adult cable drama; were you pitching it poolside in Beverly Hills, you might call it the love child of “Oz” and “The L Word.” Created by Jenji Kohan, the TV-maker best known for the Showtime series “Weeds,” “Orange” is adapted from a memoir by Piper Kerman, a blond, Waspy Smith graduate who served fifteen months in a Danbury prison. In her reckless early twenties, she was the girlfriend of an “impossibly stylish and cool” older woman, who also happened to be an international drug trafficker. A decade later, when the Feds showed up, Kerman was engaged to a man and living a law-abiding life as a West Village creative-class yuppie. She went off to prison with an O-magazine mind-set: with sufficient preparation and a can-do attitude, she could handle anything for a year. That didn’t last long.
In different hands, this might be a cringe-worthy premise: a vanilla cupcake wedged in among the down-and-out and the black-and-brown. But the show blows Kerman’s anxious, observant memoir wide open, presenting her perspective as merely one within a kaleidoscope of experiences. Like the book, the series is very clear about how much she benefits from her demographic rarity. When Piper arrives, black women glare and white women smile; a new friend clarifies what’s happening. “We look out for our own,” she says—then, after Piper’s glance, adds, “Oh, don’t get all P.C. on me. It’s tribal, not racist.” When there’s a vote for prison representatives, it’s done by districts: blacks, whites, Latinas, Golden Girls, and “others.” The homophobic case manager, who doesn’t know Piper’s sexual history, makes her his pet. But while the show touches on the grinding unfairness of the penal system, it’s never preachy or grim. It’s very different, in other words, from the Sundance series “Rectify” (which just completed its run), a more delicate prison-themed series that relied on poetry and philosophy. “Orange” embraces a pulpier approach, leaning into and then subverting our expectations of a “Caged Heat” melodrama, heightening (and sometimes inventing) tensions that are only suggested in the book.
Taylor Schilling gives an effective performance as Piper Chapman, a smart cookie with a striking ability to keep secrets from those she loves. But the show really begins to blossom as it explores the women she meets in prison: a tough-talking Russian chef (the terrific Kate Mulgrew), a beautiful male-to-female transsexual (Laverne Cox), an older Haitian woman who trails rumors of her crimes (Michelle Hurst), a young Latina (Dascha Polanco) whose mother is also in prison, and a horndog junkie (Natasha Lyonne). There’s also a raucous bull dyke, played by the fantastic lesbian comedian Lea DeLaria; a girl who is engaged to a man but hooking up with Lyonne’s character (what Kerman, in her memoir, calls “gay for the stay”); a nun; a yoga-teaching lefty; and a Holy Roller. It’s a truly impressive array of prisoners, played by actresses of varying ages and appearances, including types rarely shown on TV. When a more cartoonish figure appears—like the black butch called Crazy Eyes, who wants Piper to be her wife—the show has built sufficient trust that viewers can embrace the situation’s off-brand kink, with Crazy Eyes purring “Swirrrrl” at Piper, a mix of chocolate and vanilla. Less successful plots involve Piper’s friends and family, who are saintly in the book but satirical targets in the series, which often takes the snarky bent of a Styles-section feature in the Times, with easy shots at them as privileged narcissists.
Because Piper is housed at a minimum-security prison, the show, refreshingly—and accurately, judging from the memoir—is not driven by violence, the way that “Oz” was. One sequence even slyly builds up the audience’s appetite for savagery, then upends it with something graphically sexual, in a sequence that is sure to gross viewers out (no spoilers, but it struck me as a line in the sand, like some of the provocations on “Girls”). There is also one significant shift from the original story: in the show, Piper’s ex-girlfriend, Alex (the masterly deadpan Laura Prepon, from “That ’70s Show”), is in the same prison with her from the beginning. This creates a sub-rosa love triangle with Piper’s fiancé, and it makes Piper an intriguingly ambiguous figure, whose former sexual persona has as much legitimacy as the straight girl she’s become.
Sexuality is at the center of “Orange”: the creators pluck mere hints from the memoir and spin them into full, splashy plots. Sex operates as comfort, as currency, as romance, and also as punishment, with male guards using security frisks to bypass consent. But “Orange” is also smarter and subtler about the entire range of female-female dynamics than almost anything on TV, except maybe ABC Family’s “Bunheads” and the BBC’s “Call the Midwife” (or, if you’re drunk, “Real Housewives”). The women form quasi-familial tribes and wounded triangles; it’s a matriarchal subculture that, as a Seven Sisters graduate, Piper had some preparation for. There are more lesbians here—butch and femme and of every ethnicity—than in any other series on television. Viewers ravenous for representation often graded the fun, flawed “The L Word” on a curve. Though “Orange” bears a resemblance to that show, it’s the more solid of the two, at least so far.
Then there’s “Ray Donovan,” on Showtime, which was created by Ann Biderman, the showrunner behind the beloved cult cop drama “Southland,” which recently ended. From the poolside-pitch perspective, her new series sounds lively enough: it’s “Mystic River” plus “The Fighter,” set in a noirish modern Los Angeles, then spiced with an Elmore Leonard-esque assortment of colorful losers. Liev Schreiber plays Ray Donovan, a heavy-fisted “fixer” for a fancy law firm, the sort of fellow who makes scandals disappear, like a butch Olivia Pope. He comes from a dysfunctional clan that has been transplanted from Boston, including two sad-sack brothers, who hang around a boxing gym, and a Machiavellian ex-con father (Jon Voight), who tries to chisel his way back into the family. Ray struggles to keep his wife and their teen-age kids safe, and there are secrets and lies and Southie accents thick as bisque—but, from the start, there’s also a strong sense of cable contrivance.
In each episode, Ray confronts a new set of Hollywood reprobates: a closeted movie star, a predatory pop star, a womanizing athlete, a sleazy executive. Some he threatens, some he gets out of trouble, but the show makes sure to dish up regular servings of stylized ultraviolence—torture for viewers to simultaneously cluck their tongues at and get off on. Jaunty oldies play over montages of corruption, a TV cliché that should be outlawed. Ray’s wife nags him for working too much. Most of the show feels like a dose of the same dirty candy that’s dished out all over adult cable, with one exception: Ray’s brother Bunchy, who attends a sexual-abuse support group and has won a settlement from the Catholic Church. The aura of unresolved mourning that infects Ray’s family, even his devilish father, feels more authentic than anything else on “Ray Donovan,” and Dash Mihok is solid and affecting as Bunchy.
Schreiber is an excellent actor who can brood with the best of them, but his character is straight out of antihero central casting: a sinner, but smarter than everyone else. He’s more masculine, more tormented, more empathetic. Naturally, he’s catnip to women, including his sniping wife (a wasted Paula Malcomson). Yet even as he drinks, and isolates himself, rubbing his stubbly jaw, the show keeps stacking the deck in his favor. He’s surrounded by quislings and hypocrites: rich L.A. creeps (Jewish men), jocks and rappers (black men), and the many perverts and thugs who are dumber and grosser than he is. He has a soft spot for twisty dames and suffering children. He’s the only one strong enough to reject his slimy dad. The show suggests promising themes—including parallels between Hollywood, the Church, and Ray’s family—but they’re overpowered by his role as a sordid fantasy figure.
Later episodes offer more humor and surprise, but the show may simply have come out at the wrong time, at least for me: I’m sick of disgust. “Ray Donovan” is fuelled by that emotion, particularly by a rage at ugly systems. But the series exists within its own ugly system, mining the by now tired convention of the thoughtful thug—the same idea that was so brilliantly subverted by more ambitious series, such as “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad.” So far, at least, “Ray Donovan” has more in common with “House of Lies” or “Californication,” shows that have a quality I’ve come to think of as That’s So Showtime: a lurid air of exploitation that feels fungal, funky, and off-putting.
“Orange” has sordid and sad things on display, too, and it’s certainly not immune to shock value. But there’s no disgust for human weakness, it doesn’t see criminals as trash, and it doesn’t use cartoonish bad guys to prop up its protagonist’s aura of virtue and specialness. In fact, it does the opposite, using its mainstream heroine as a Trojan horse. “Orange” would likely not have been green-lighted if its central story had involved a poor black drug dealer. Even “The Wire,” one of the blackest TV crime dramas ever, had a white antihero as its lead. So did “Oz,” which shared a similar premise. (White person lands in penitentiary hell.) But “Orange” uses that premise as a lure to get us to listen to other voices. I hope it sticks around so that we can hear them all. ♦