Sci-Fi with European roots
NETFLIX SERIES DARK IS GERMAN ANSWER TO STRANGER THINGS
You could argue that the new Netflix series Dark is the German Stranger Things. You could also say, somewhat flippantly but not inaccurately, that it’s the show for people who thought Stranger Things was just a little too much fun.
The 10- episode series, Netflix’s first German production, is a multi- generational science- fiction- and-horror tale set in a small town in the shadow of a mysterious installation, in this case a nuclear power plant. It involves children who go missing in other dimensions, nighttime searches, underground passages and an elaborate hand- drawn map. The surface similarities to Netflix’s American- made hit Stranger Things are strong.
But the show’s European roots are even stronger. In place of the U.S. show’s ceaseless adrenalin rush, Dark offers a hushed, brittle artsiness that will be familiar to fans of the French ghost story The Returned or the British- French thriller The Missing.
Along the same lines, it has a lot of voice- over philosophizing about what turns out to be its major theme: time travel. Simple ideas about fate and determinism are worked out at great length and in complicated ways that will appeal to those who like their sci-fi on the heavy side.
Indeed, one of the major challenges of watching Dark is simply keeping track of who’s who in a story that jumps among three timelines ( 2019, 1986 and 1953) and f our f amilies, with many of the main characters played by multiple actors of different ages.
At times the series, cre- ated by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, seems to have been constructed with the aid of spreadsheets, but there’s no denying its ingenuity. Beginning with the unexplained suicide of a father in 2019, it moves forward and backward in time, introducing the tangled lives of the residents of the forest town of Winden.
Affairs are had, secrets are revealed, and families move up and down in the town’s pecking order, which centres on the nuclear plant. ( There’s a strong Days of Our Half- Lives soap- opera element.) Lights flicker all over town, and ominous sound and music cues relentlessly pump the suspense. A series of disappearances echoes events from 33 years before, and an intrepid teenager, Jonas ( Louis Hofmann, steady at the centre of the large cast), sets off into the caverns under the plant to solve the mystery.
The lugubrious discussions of fate and circularity are a drawback, unless you like that sort of thing, but the show does have a sense of humour that peeks through occasionally, particularly once the time travelling starts in earnest. In a moment with a touch of Stranger Things-style self- awareness, Jonas, learning the ropes, is told, “No DeLorean.”
Jonas’s search f or answers offers the pleasures of puzzle- solving, if not profound drama, and if you give “Dark” a few episodes you may find yourself hooked. ( You may al s o wonder whether the idea of cutting off evil influences emanating from the past is a specifically German theme.) Odar and Friese seem confident that viewers will sign on — their finale takes a wild turn that dares Netflix not to give them a second season.