The gay brother is the coolest character.

It’s a tough call. The show deserves a row of Emmies. Delightfully subversive of all kinds of shibboleths without ever seeming to deviate from standard lib doctrine. The villain of the script is, finally, as it must be, corporate, but the villain of the subtext is totalitarian scientism, which regards all of us as indistinguishable units to be managed like cattle and if necessary slaughtered like cattle. Equally sly is the dynamiting of the false notion that homosexuality is genetic, which even geneticists concede it can’t be.

None of this is meant to suggest that the show itself is some kind of screed. It isn’t. It’s suspenseful, action-packed, hilarious, moving, and utterly absorbing. Ten episodes, complete season finished. Emmies obviously go to show, scriptwriter, and director. Where it gets hard is with the actors. Felix as the foster-brother of Sara is tempting as the top candidate. In the later episodes you worry that they might actually kill him off, which would cut your interest in half.

On the other hand are the actresses who play the clones. They’re all marvelous, starting with the crazed assassin Helena.

I’m a Ukrainiac. Kill, love, kill, love, kill.

But the soccer mom Alison is as subtly realized as Helena is over the top. Just as nuts yet it takes hours to realize how deep down batty she really is.

I just want my life back. Even if it kills you.

Cosima is even subtler, a weedy academic rational shell hiding a volcanically passionate emotional pushover. This far in, we’re still not sure who she is.

I’m smarter than everybody but me.

Still, the winner has to be Sara, streetwise, sexy, cunning, disreputable, and absolutely focused on protecting her five year old daughter. It’s a spellbinding performance, so good that you forget she’s not technically beautiful. It turns out that she is beautiful, as played by Tatiana Maslany.

I can do this. All of it.

Remember that name. She became a star in Orphan Black.