Review: Netflix's Dark is So, So Good
Image courtesy of Netflix.
Dark, a German-language sci-fi series airing on Netflix, is a revelation.
I knew nothing about this show prior to clicking on it, somewhat at random, when it popped up in Netflix’s suggestions. I had previously toyed with the thought, but the idea of watching some 20 hours of serialized German-language television gave me pause. More fool I. This is one of the best shows I have ever seen. It knows exactly what it wants to be, it is intricately and sweepingly plotted, well acted and it strikes just the right tone from wire to wire. Please be aware, there will be spoilers in the following. And believe me, this is a show you don’t want to have spoiled beforehand.
It starts with a great hook - a guy hangs himself in his basement and leaves a note for whoever finds him that says “Do not open before November 4, 10:13 P.M." Then the show tries to trick you by going through the paces. It jumps ahead a few months as the little German town of Widen, which for some reason has a nuclear power plant, deals with the mysterious disappearance of a young boy. We are introduced to all the major characters that inhabit this town: the local police chief, the school principle, a detective who is having an affair with the dead guy’s wife, a local professor, a demented old guy, etc. They all have kids. It’s a nicely constructed, self-contained little narrative cosmology filled out with all the roles you would expect. It lulls you into this false sense of complacency as you think, yeah OK we’ve got our little world here with its seemingly normal veneer and I’m sure it will slowly spill its secrets.
Then the time travel starts. The son of the local police detective suddenly goes missing near the mouth of a cave in the woods, and is transported 33 years back in time to 1987. There, he meets his future wife and suddenly you realize something: the guy who hung himself was the police detective’s son who had traveled back in time. Later, the detective will travel back in time looking for his son but will end up by accident in 1953 where he will remain, trapped in time, waiting until 1987 arrives so he can speak with his son. A family, separated by decades and trapped in different timelines as they wait for them to converge.. This takes family melodrama to another level entirely.
To describe the plot would be, well, useless really because if you just write it down it sounds implausible. But at one point a woman finds out that she is her own grandmother. I mean. Come on. Once the time travel mechanism is fully uncorked, the story begins to ripple outward in these languid and meticulously planned waves. It slowly moves ever outward from the center, toward the past and the future, introducing older and younger versions of the same cast of characters along the way. It is mindbogglingly complex. Since the third season hasn’t run yet, we can’t say for sure if the writers know what they are doing, or if they are just making it up as they go along. But so far, the first two seasons have been structurally almost as perfect as they could possibly be.
This is a show that knows exactly what it wants to be. The tone is dark, confident and knowing, filled with the kind of yearning indie pop that makes you feel bad about being middle class. The style of the show creates this this sense of longing or displacement. It’s a bleak world, but the possibilities contained within it are so fascinating, and the mysteries are so huge, so monumental, spanning time and space and generations of lives all bound together by this propulsive narrative with just enough doled out at just the right moments to keep you glued to the screen like a drug addict.
I really don’t know what else to say about this show except watch it. The worst thing I can say about Dark, really, is that eventually it ends and you wish that it wouldn’t. Hopefully season three can deliver on the promises they have made. Only time will tell.
