Orphan Black Season 3 to premiere on BBC iPlayer
David Farnor | On 20, Sep 2015
Orphan Black Season 3 will premiere on BBC iPlayer on Wednesday 23rd September.
The Canadian sci-fi series, created by Graeme Manson and John Fawcett, first arrived in the UK back in September 2013, a few weeks after its premiere in Canada. Since then, the show has become a big success, building a following on BBC America and on BBC Three and earning a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for this year’s Emmys.
It stars Tatiana Maslay as Sarah Manning, a con artist who discovers that she is the product of a cloning programme. The third run premieres at 10pm on Wednesday 23rd September, several days ahead of its broadcast on BBC Three. The series will land on the linear channel at 2.10am on Sunday 27th September, with episodes shown in pairs in the early hours of the morning.
The decision to premiere the series exclusively online follows previous seasons of Orphan Black, which have also debuted on iPlayer ahead of their TV schedule, and arrives as the Beeb plans to turn BBC Three into an online-only channel, as part of its cost-cutting measures and increasingly digital-oriented strategy.
Outlining its plans for the coming decade last month, the BBC revealed that it wants to use the online BBC Three to make “new types of programmes” for young adults.
“As it will not be a broadcast channel, it will not have to consist only of half-hour and hour-long programmes,” noted the Beeb. “We have set up a team in Birmingham to explore what could work best. But we are interested in going further, and stimulating the production market outside London. We would be interested in receiving proposals from cities or regions who would like to set up a centre of excellence for experimental online content. If there is enough interest, we would run a competition to decide the location, and what support the BBC could promise.”
Ahead of Wednesday’s iPlayer premiere, here are a selection of images from Episode 1, titled The Weight of This Combination.
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