Orange Is The New Black: 6 Reasons It's Netflix's Best Original Series
4. But It Also Goes Really Dark
Although Season 1 of Orange is the New Black had its moments, it was Season 2 when there was a noticeable shift. That's when the show started moving away from being Piper's story to an all-encompassing narrative, but it's also when it truly started embracing the darkness.
It had a true villain for the first time, in the form of Vee, and it started taking more violent turns and plumbing the depths of life in prison. It was, at times, brutal to watch.
Since then, it's really eschewed having one overarching villain, as the cast and viewpoint has expanded to include more and more characters and separate arcs, but that hasn't resulted in the show lightening its tone.
Season 4 went darker still, and Season 5 is seemingly eschewing the more comedic notions altogether in order to deliver outright emotional brutality.
This is a show that, more than any other on Netflix, will take you down into the pit of despair, putting your favourite characters (and there are a lot of them) through endless amounts of trauma, whether it's inflicted by the guards, fellow inmates, or themselves.
Murder, rape, or drug abuse, there's nothing they won't show, and explore each in greater detail than you'd typically find elsewhere, and it means all of the characters are tested - and developed - in ways a lot of shows simply don't attempt, much less succeed at.