I first heard about the TV show Orphan Black through a friend of mine who raved about it, saying that it’s a must see. I hesitated but gave it a go. At first, I wasn’t very impressed to be honest, but after two episodes I engaged in a conversation on Twitter with a film critic, who encouraged me to keep watching. The series kept getting better and better, mainly because of the lead actress Tatiana Maslany, who played several roles. She’s just great at that. I don’t want to discuss more, because I don’t want to spoil your fun.
My favourite TV critic Alan Sepinwall was pleasantly surprised, too. He even said that Orphan Black evolved from pleasant surprise to genuine pleasure and that Maslany deserves an Emmy nomination. So, there you go. :)
The show, which is set in some unknown city in the present day, has some product placement, but it wasn’t done in an offensive way. There were of course some examples that would require somewhat different approach, but let’s check some examples from the show.
Jaguar X-Type
This was probably the most prominent placement. The car could be seen in several episodes and Sarah (the main character) even said: “Nice” when she first saw the car.
Nokia Lumia 900 and Nokia C2
Both phones were present all the time, but rarely seen in close-up.
Sony Vaio
Two of the charaters (Beth and Rachel) were using Sony Vaio laptops, while Felix used Sony headphones.
Fictional brands
BBC America is not among the biggest TV channels in USA and that could be one of the reasons that the producers included several fictional brands in the show: Wolfenstein Lager, Eagle’s Flight and Wade Marsh whiskeys.
Below you can find Slideshare presentation with even more brands from Orphan Black
As I said product placement in Orphan Black was done very elegantly without any excesses. I would dare to say that Nokia’s placement could be done better. The phone had an important part of the story, but could be visible more.
