SERIES PREMIERE: Jenji Kohan, whose Weeds recently ended an enjoyable if overly lengthy run on Showtime, joins the ranks of writer-producers taking their wares to Netflix. Based on the memoir by Piper Kerman, Orange Is the New Black stars Taylor Schilling as Piper, a middle-class white woman ratted out by a former lover in a plea bargain, for her complicity in a one-time money-smuggling crime a decade earlier. She turns herself in for an 18-month stint in prison, with her new fiancé promising to wait, and with a whole new world of people and problems awaiting behind bars. The show’s structure is like Oz, with character backgrounds revealed in brief but focused flashback – but Orange is by no means as dark a dramatic color as Oz. In the early episodes, Kate Mulgrew (as the Russian inmate running the kitchen) and Laura Prepon (as Piper’s former, lesbian lover) pop most clearly, and Schilling reels you in quickly as the vulnerable but resourceful Piper. There’s a sense, though, that every member of the Orange team will get his or her chance at bat. As its latest batch of original series goes, Netflix has misfired only with Hemlock Grove. Orange Is the New Black, like House of Cards and Arrested Development, belongs in the winners column. All 13 episodes were made available at 3 a.m. ET today. For a full review, see Uncle Barky's Bytes.