I DVR’d the premiere of BBC America’s new series Orphan Black a few weeks ago and finally got around to watching it last night. My first impression? A potentially interesting storyline mired in a quicksand of background and setting.

The show’s premise is that a troubled young woman named Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) sees her doppelgänger commit suicide on a subway platform and takes the opportunity to swap identities, figuring the dead woman’s life must be better than her own. Notwithstanding the fact that the woman just jumped in front of a train.

The identity swap is a plot premise used as recently as Ringer two years ago and at least as far back as Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Still, the backstory has some potential: Sarah has a shady background, a daughter of whom she doesn’t have custody, a gay-artist foster brother who represents her conscience and a cartoon of a thuggish, drug-dealing boyfriend. The woman who’s identity she assumes turns out not only to be a cop but also in trouble for shooting an unarmed woman. The cop has access to a large amount of cash, which attracts Sarah, but the cash – and Sarah – may or may not be connected to a Boys from Brazil-type cloning story.

Thing is, a show like this – with a story arc of bit-by-bit exposition – needs to have its facts straight so the audience can play along and try to figure what’s going on. This became a problem for Lost, as some critics and fans wondered if there was an organized backstory or if the writers were making it up as they went along. Battlestar Galactica did a better job of keeping its mythology in order, but even it left some confusion in the end. (What the frak was Starbuck in the final few episodes?)

Orphan Black couldn’t keep its facts straight for even one episode. It’s supposed to be set in New York, but the skyline and street architecture are all wrong. There is nothing New Yorky about it. Most of the characters have English accents. And the cars very obviously have Ontario license plates. So are Sarah and company in the United States, England or Canada? Plenty of movies and television shows are filmed in Canada, eh? But most make a rudimentary effort to portray their fictitious settings.

By making so little effort to keep their facts straight, the writers and producers insult their audience. When a show is new, and when its story based upon a background mythology that viewers must follow to know what is going on, the result is doubly confusing.

I was really disappointed with the Orphan Black premiere. So much so that I am putting the series on probation. I might watch another episode because I remember what a mess TNT’s Falling Skies was the first half of Season 1 before its makers got their act together. But without serious, rapid improvement, Orphan Black could become an orphan show – one without an audience.

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Stuart J. Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.