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Orphan Black has cloned itself another season.
BBC America has renewed the critically hailed sci-fi series led by Tatiana Maslany for a third season, greenlighting 10 more episodes for a spring 2015 premiere. Production on the new season kicks off in Toronto in September.
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The one-hour clone drama has become a crucial benchmark for the cable network as it expands its foothold in original scripted programming beyond British staple Doctor Who. Orphan Black has attracted more that its share of accolades since its March 2013 launch, earning Maslany — who plays nearly a dozen characters — a Golden Globe nomination and honors from the Critics’ Choice TV Awards, TCA Awards and Canadian Screen Awards. This year, Orphan Black added a Peabody Award to its trophy case.
Orphan Black‘s season-two premiere on April 19 lured 1.24 million viewers, and its adults 18-49 demographic viewership jumped 91 percent to 746,000 with live-plus-3 DVR factored in. The premiere’s total audience increased to nearly 1.6 million with the DVR boost while the season-two finale hit a series high in live-plus-7, drawing 1.4 million viewers. The series, along with Doctor Who, contributed to BBC America’s best year ratingswise to date.
Orphan Black is produced by Temple Street Productions, in association with BBC America and Canada’s Space. The series is co-created by Graeme Manson and John Fawcett, with Manson also serving as writer and Fawcett as director. In addition to Maslany, the main cast includes Jordan Gavaris, Dylan Bruce, Kevin Hanchard, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Evelyne Brochu.
Following the season-two finale, Fawcett told the The Hollywood Reporter that the final episode, which ended with Mark (Ari Millen) as a male clone, “put in motion” the new season. “A lot of the things that we put in motion at the end of season two are obviously big story components going forward and new pieces to the puzzle,” he said at the time. “We believe in giving the audience answers, but we have our mysteries and we want to earn the answers. This is kind of a new aspect to the larger puzzle that is Orphan Black.”
Also in the BBC America pipeline for 2015: the second season of British drama Broadchurch, which returns stars David Tennant, Olivia Colman, Jodie Whittaker, Arthur Darvill and Andrew Buchan. Tennant also toplines Fox’s Broadchurch adaptation, Gracepoint, which hits U.S. television this fall.
Additionally, the cable network has commissioned two dramas: the eight-episode Tatau, from the producers of Being Human, and the previously announced eight-episode The Last Kingdom, a historical series based on Bernard Cornwell‘s best-selling series of novels The Saxon Stories.
Email: Philiana.Ng@THR.com
Twitter: @insidethetube
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