Orange is the New Black: Season 2

'This is, like, next level crazy,' says one of Litchfield's inmates a few episodes into the second season of Netflix's hugely popular prison drama. She speaks the truth. Orange is the New Black pushes the boundaries even further this time round. Whilst still outrageously funny and well-written, it is unafraid to bare its claws, probing deeper into prison's seedy power plays and the fractured instability of life behind bars. Season one's mysterious chicken has been replaced by an army of cockroaches.

And I mean that literally. One of the best things about this show is the weirdness of its comedy. The aforementioned insects make a great cameo in the opening episode, which takes the creative risk of almost completely isolating Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) from the rest of the cohort. After several weeks in solitary confinement  —  following a brutal altercation with Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning)  —  Piper finds herself transferred to Chicago to give evidence alongside her former girlfriend, Alex Vause (Laura Prepon). The tortuous dynamic between these two women made the first season crackle with chemistry and it remains a constant pressure point for Piper in the second, although Prepon's greatly reduced role renders Vause a notable absence at Litchfield. Not giving away any spoilers, the manner of her exit is characteristically Machiavellian.

The sidelining of the central relationship opens up the stage for the rest of the cast. This show is blessed with an extraordinary and diverse collection of characters, and creator Jenji Kohan uses each episode to paint an intimate single history. Brief, wonderfully drawn portraits emerge of drug trafficking, domestic violence, and childhood mental illness. Uzo Aduba is once again outstanding as 'Crazy Eyes,' and Yael Stone gives the performance of the season as Lorna Morello, whose heartbreaking backstory unravels our previous conceptions of her impossibly nasal, consummately cheerful character.

There are new faces too, crucially in the form of Vee (Lorraine Toussaint), who goes back a long way with both Red (Kate Mulgrew) and Taystee (Danielle Brooks). The vicious fight for social capital between Vee and Red sets the tone for this season, which entrenches the aggressive racial groupings and internal hierarchies that inevitably form in this kind of highly managed, claustrophobic space. Friendships and romances are put under considerable strain as tensions bleed between these unhappy quarters. Other narrative arcs include Daya's (Dascha Polanco) illicit affair with prison guard John Bennet (Matt McGorry), and Larry's (Jason Biggs) continual battle for self-preservation in the outside world.

I am possibly not alone in thinking that the sheer volume of characters makes this show, at times, frustrating to watch. Frequently, we spend an hour delving into a single inmate's psychology only to have her swiftly put at a distance for several episodes. Some characters are simply more interesting than others and I would have been happy to lose Cindy's backstory, or the absurdly irritating Soso, if Nicky (Natasha Lyonne) could have had more screen time. Her biting, incisive humour forms a particularly apt foil for Piper's self-deception.

The panoramic scope of this season is, then, both its greatest strength and its single weakness. Piper might not be the most popular character but I think she's a great anchor for the show's narrative, and Schilling's performance is never less than inspired. Her scenes with Alex, and one particular conversation with Larry and Polly, showcase her ability to move seamlessly between states of comic disbelief, blinkered narcissism, and genuine devastation. The final episodes seem to hint at a full-circle structure, with Prepon's return confirmed for Season three, and Piper's role in this arc has been gleefully established. Orange is the New Black remains utterly compelling, unsettlingly compulsive viewing, and the sheer depth of its fictional world ensures that every episode is rich in dramatic quality and, at times, tragic insight.

House of Cards: Seasons 1 and 2

I watched the first two episodes of House of Cards over a socially acceptable two nights. My general feeling was, 'meh.' Then, I watched a couple more and suddenly found myself totally, irreversibly gripped. It was disastrous. Within a week and a half I'd finished both seasons. This is a slow burner but as the levels of the drama deepen, you find yourself immersed in a high-stakes world of political infidelity, professional manipulation, and a marital complex akin to the Macbeths.

First, let's talk about politics. Kevin Spacey is Francis Underwood, the Chief Whip of the ruling Democrats and basically the go-to man in Congress. He is alternately magnificent, slimy, duplicitous and sympathetic. I hated him and yet I rooted for him. There is something magnetic and endlessly watchable about the way he toys with other people, ranging from the sharp young journalist Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) to the President of the United States. Over the two seasons, we watch him manoeuvre his way up the party ranks, involved in his most intimate confessions through a clever use of asides to the camera.

The plot lines are too numerous to cover: there is a suspicious campaign to elect former addict Peter Russo (Corey Stoll) to Governor of Pennsylvania; a mysterious cover up involving call-girl Rachel (Rachel Brosnahan); a veiled political relationship with oily businessman Raymond Tusk (Gerald McRaney). At the centre of all these strands sits Underwood, a fat spider, his eyes gleaming with ambition.

Next to him throughout is his wife Claire, icily rendered by an impenetrable Robin Wright. Their marriage is undoubtedly the show's (barely) beating heart. They are a cold, calculating pair, retreating at the end of each day to share a celebratory cigarette by the window as they tot up the body-count. Wright's performance is astonishing - it takes a vast range to create such an unreadable and yet fully-formed character, always retaining an edge of unpredictability. It is never quite clear whether she and Francis are each other's only allies, or, tantalisingly, their most formidable opponents.

Season 1 revolves around Underwood's schemes involving Russo and Zoe Barnes; by Season 2, with a rising death-toll, his sights are set much higher. The pace seems to quicken with every episode and the layers of plot and character become ever more engrossing. This is fantastic television. If you don't already have it, get Netflix!

Orange is the New Black: Season 1

The joy and drawback of Netflix is that it lets you watch entire seasons in one sitting. This means that people across the world are losing whole days to shows like this. Orange is the New Black must have looked like a gamble on paper. It has a predominantly female cast and is set almost entirely inside a women's prison. Unlike House of Cards, this cast is composed of largely unfamiliar faces, and the characters they play are far from conventional. But the results are explosive, heart-rending and, frequently, hilarious.

Our unfortunate convict is Piper Chapman, played to perfection by Taylor Schilling. Chapman is based on the real-life former inmate Piper Kerman, whose memoir inspired and shaped the script. In her early twenties, she had an intensely complex relationship with a drug-dealer and on one occasion, acted as her mule to carry narcotics across international borders. Having totally redefined herself over the following decade - read, become engaged to sweetly dull Larry (Jason Biggs) and started a soap business - she is called to account by the law and forced to serve a late prison sentence.

Piper's first few days inside are comic gold. One of the strongest aspects of this show is its wonderful ensemble cast and as the diverse lineup of characters is introduced, the whole atmosphere behind to hiss with pent-up rage, suspicion and passion. Kate Mulgrew is unstoppable as Red, the Russian cook who rules her kitchen with an iron-fist, tempered with surprising shows of compassion, and Taryn Manning's violently Evangelical 'Pennsatucky' provides a searing point of conflict within the rest of the cohort. Creator Jenji Kohan gives ample time to all of their backstories, allowing a rich and fully realised portrait of prison life to emerge.

Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse for Piper when she is reunited inside with her former lover Alex Vause, played with indecent smoulder by Laura Prepon. A fun drinking game might be to do a shot whenever Vause suggestively removes her glasses. Their relationship forms the core of the first season and it is through this reconnection that Piper's mask of suburban contentment begins to crumble. Her slow transformation is great to watch: often very funny but, at times, vaguely terrifying. The final episode, rather than restoring equilibrium, radically upsets the balance of things within the walls of Litchfield. Season 2 starts on 6th June. I better stock up on snacks.

If there were laws against eyebrows...

Coming Soon: Under the Skin (TBC)

Jonathan Glazer hasn't made anything new since Birth, an intensely disturbing study of loss released all the way back in 2004. That's not necessarily for want of trying - the production of Under the Skin has been plagued by reshoots and missed deadlines but it now looks like it's finally on its way to cinema screens. Next week, it will premier at the Venice Film Festival and this will hopefully accelerate its release although, as of yet, no firm date has been set.

The Shining (1980)

Pauline Kael, in her review for the New Yorker, saw The Shining as a crude, clumsy examination of man turned back into ape; a regressive step in Stanley Kubrick's cinematic endeavours, which had seen the birth of the Nietzschean Star-Child at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Certainly, The Shining is an endlessly slippery film. It refuses to conform to the tropes of horror, and when it does employ them, it is usually for subversive purposes. The remote hotel in the mountains is not the dark, Gothic motel of Psycho, but a strangely well-lit, labyrinthine mansion of kaleidoscopic carpets and sharply defined corridors. Shelley Duvall's weepy, wifely Wendy is not quite the shrinking violet she seems, but we're never sure whether to laugh at her or keep our fingers crossed for an escape. Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance is so obviously mad from the outset that Kubrick does away with suspense early on, but what he leaves in its absence is much more interesting. He wants to find out what lurks beneath the superficial scares of the horror film; what is waiting for Danny, and us, at the heart of the maze?

There are very few real frights in The Shining - Kubrick is far more concerned with building an atmosphere of interminable repetition and claustrophobia. Maze images dominate the film's architecture, from the patterns on the hotel floor and the network of corridors through which the Steadicam stalks Danny, to the literal maze looming vast and unmappable at the side of the hotel. One of the many deliberate errors in Kubrick's work is the 'model maze' in the hotel lobby, which bears little resemblance to the actual structure it is claiming to represent. All this serves to heighten the sense that the Overlook Hotel is watching its residents, trapping them in its seemingly ordered grounds. As Wendy muses whilst being given a tour, 'the whole place is such an enormous maze I’ll have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs every time I come in.’ Her Grimm's fairytale reference is unknowingly apt, as this winter in the mountains descends into every child's worst nightmare of parental malevolence. 

The problem some people have with The Shining is the sense that, at times, it seems to parody its own purposes. Nicholson's facial expressions are so excessive, so explicitly a caricature of psychosis, that he rages through the hotel as a kind of tragicomic clown, and it's tempting to chuckle when, armed with an axe, he utters the immortal line: 'Honey, I'm home!' However, Kubrick revels in this kind of generic playfulness. The Shining is parodic only in the sense that it sometimes mocks the tradition it has been born from. Ultimately, Kubrick doesn't need static television sets, home-videos of houses at night, or shower scenes gone awry to generate unease. The brilliance of this film rests in the depth of its structure. We are led through a maze of uncanny repetitions and dead ends and we are left to wonder if it is really a mirror Kubrick has placed at the centre, one of the many mirrors into which Jack leers knowingly during his descent into uncontainable madness.