Jane the Virgin

The premise is certainly unusual: A young woman who has never had sex gets pregnant via artificial insemination, and the father happens to be an old flame who owns the Miami hotel where she works. But viewers who watch Jane the Virgin expecting only finely wrought melodrama and delightfully soapy twists will get far more than they bargained for. The starting story supplied only the first few waves of plot complication. Things only got more complicated as each trimester passed. Jane is a sensitive and thoughtful family drama, one that touches on such subjects as religion, class and immigration reform in deft and intelligent ways. It uses multi-layered storytelling and a delightfully chummy narrator to ground all of its characters’ concerns in a believable reality, even as it uses surreal flourishes and over-the-top moments to convey extreme emotional states. Through it all – a murder mystery, romances, a gentle spoof of Hollywood egos — Jane the Virgin quietly celebrates the varied and complex strengths of the Latina women who form the matriarchy at its core. For skillfully combining a half-dozen show premises within one sharp, funny and compassionate narrative, Jane the Virgin wins a Peabody Award.