My moment came when Taystee took the fall for the riot, meaning one of the show’s most beloved characters was dealt the blow of a life sentence without parole. Yes, it’s about incarcerated women, so it was never likely to be a cuddly rainbow explosion, but it is also entertainment, not a documentary about penal reform – and there proved to be an upper limit to how much suffering viewers could manage. Its warm wit makes you love characters, but then the show does cruel, terrible things to them. One of the main criticisms the show has faced is that it is too depressing. It dedicated a whole season to a three-day prison riot, which was a bold idea whose execution collapsed into a mess of confusion. While OITNB was always ambitious, it occasionally tripped over its own shoelaces. It exits with this, its seventh and final season: easily the best and most self-assured since its debut. In 2013, when we realised we could watch 13 episodes in a weekend, OITNB figured out how to pace its stories according to overindulgence, rather than the traditional weekly drop-in. It made stars of its huge cast, and set the template for the modern age of binge-watching. Its stories crossed lines of class, race, sexuality and gender and mixed up comedy and drama to such an extent that it confused awards judges. It was the third series ever commissioned by Netflix, after House of Cards and the now-forgotten Hemlock Grove, and the first that made the most of the idea that an audience might be hungry to see representations of itself. There are not many shows that can lay claim to changing the television landscape during their lifetime, but Orange Is the New Black (Netflix) is one of them.
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