Orange is the New Black: Is season five out of control?

Season five of hit prison series Orange is the New Black (OITNB) is released on Netflix in the UK today and critics say it's a bold new direction, even if it doesn't always pay off.

Picking up from season four's cliffhanger, when Litchfield was on the brink of a riot after popular inmate Poussey (Samira Wiley) was killed by a prison guard, the 13-part season takes place over the space of three days and begins with Dayanara Diaz (Dascha Polanco) pointing a gun at another guard, Humps (Michael Torpey).

Critics have praised the new season for its bold storytelling, but others wonder if it has lost its way.

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Isabel Mohan in the Daily Telegraph says the three-day time scale is a "risky experimental move", but "what an eventful three days they are".

She adds that the new season offers some "fascinating insight" into emerging characters, but overall feels like a "particularly well-written horror film", with "increasingly macabre twists" that start to make "Breaking Bad look like Teletubbies".

James Poniewozik in the New York Times agrees, calling it an "audacious if sometimes out-of-control" season that commits to things that "can't be undone".

With the hostage siege, he says, "this acerbic comedy-drama, is instantly pushed hard to the drama end of the spectrum". It's a "gutsy move" for a show with success and "invests the season with purpose".

He concludes that now, more than ever, OITNB seems like a speeding vehicle with a missing wheel. "It doesn’t always steer steadily," but "the velocity is urgent".

The show's writers deserve credit for "refusing to play it safe", says Daniel Fienberg in the Hollywood Reporter, who says the fifth season "deviates wildly" from previous years in "episodic rhythms, overall narrative urgency and tonal pitch".

The "heightened stakes" help deliver some of the show's best performances, but also "threatens to undermine a lot of what came before", he says, concluding: "I both respect the shake-up and find it infuriating."

Meanwhile, Danette Chavez of the AV Club complains that "even this otherwise riveting Netflix series can squander momentum".

OITNB had pathos and humour, says the critic, but now its "earnestness and zaniness work against each other" and it ends up "stifling its ambitions with clutter".

Ultimately, argues Chavez, there's too much going on in some episodes to do justice to the characters or the motivations: "OITNB says it wants a revolution, but it fails to back that talk up in its execution."