PRESS RELEASE
Foxtel’s showcase channel will premiere the Lionsgate/Netflix original series Orange is the New Black on Wednesday October 9 at 8.30pm. Created by Jenji Kohan (“Weeds”), the comic drama starring Taylor Schilling is set in a women’s prison and is based on the U.S. best-selling memoir by Piper Kerman.
Engaged Brooklynite Piper Chapman (Taylor Shilling), whose decade-old relationship with drug-runner Alex (Laura Prepon) results in her arrest and year-long detention in a federal penitentiary. To pay her debt to society, Piper must trade her comfortable New York life with fiancé Larry (Jason Biggs), for an orange prison jumpsuit and a baffling prison culture where she is forced to question everything she believes about herself and the world at large. As she struggles to adjust to her new reality, she finds unexpected laughter, tears, conflict and camaraderie amidst an eccentric and outspoken group of inmates.
Critically acclaimed in the US, The Los Angeles Times describes it as “Smart, funny and surprisingly moving, Orange is the New Black dares to suggest that the pretty, white, middle-class gal that television so loves to position as an Everywoman is nothing of the kind. As Piper Chapman, actress Taylor Shilling has all the high-maintenance, obliviously entitled tics down pat.”
Entertainment Weekly said…”what you get from Jenji Kohan’s unexpectedly affecting new 13-episode series is a true rarity: a deft mix of comedy and drama in which the prison feels like a real place and the women are actual people.”
Orange is the New Black also stars Michelle Hurst (Miss Claudette), Kate Mulgrew (Galina “Red” Reznikov), Natasha Lyonne (Nicky Nichols), Laura Prepon (Alex Vause), Michael Harney (Sam Healy), Maria Dizzia (Polly Harper), Pablo Schreiber (Pornstache) and Australian Actress Yael Stone (Lorna Morello).
Orange is the New Black from Wednesday, October 9 at 8.30pm only on showcase.