Netflix’s latest show crosses a new border
German series Dark centres on a small town plagued by strange goings-on
At first glance, “Dark,” Netflix’s first original German-language series, might seem familiar to fans of the streaming service’s other recent hits. The show, which debuted internationally on Dec. 1, centres on a small town plagued by strange goings-on at a nearby power facility. It also features an expansive cast of largely young actors, a time-warped structure and cryptic scenes of a teenager imprisoned in a brightly lit room.
But its creators, director Baran bo Odar and writer Jantje Friese, are quick to point out that “Dark” isn’t a blend of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and “The OA.” For one, the show’s episodes were written before those programs were released and lean more toward science fiction than horror. They also point out that its understated sensibility makes it a uniquely German contribution to the rapidly expanding world of premium television.
“I don’t know if it’s German angst, but there is something uniquely creepy about Germans, at least from the outside perspective,” Friese said. “We are definitely delivering on that.”
Odar and Friese, longtime collaborators who have been a couple for 15 years, were first approached by Netflix in 2015 about turning their hit “Who Am I,” a hacker film, into a series. The streaming service had been hunting for ideas for a German original series as part of its international expansion.
“We saw things that were more conventional cop shows or traditional storytelling,” Erik Barmack, Netflix’s vice president for international originals said by phone from Los Angeles. “Then they sat down and pitched this thing that was multi-generational, that involved time travel and a supernatural component, and all these things drew us in.”
“Dark” takes place in the fictional town of Winden (a play on the German word for “twists”), whose forested surroundings are dominated by the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant. Its characters include Jonas Kahnwald (Louis Hofmann), a gloomy teenager still reeling from his father’s suicide; Ulrich Nielsen (Oliver Masucci), a headstrong police officer having an affair with Jonas’ mother; and Nielsen’s wife, Katharina (Jördis Triebel), who works at the local school. When a young boy disappears and a body is found in the woods, the resulting mystery seems to point to the nuclear plant.
Odar, 39, and Friese, 40, were inspired by their childhoods in small German towns during the Chornobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, when the release of radioactive materials over Europe in 1986 spurred widespread fears of contamination.
“It’s a very German, or European, feeling that Americans don’t get because they never had fallout like that,” Odar said. “My mom told me, ‘You can’t play outside anymore, especially if it’s raining, it will kill you,’ or, ‘You can’t buy sweets in that store because it’s radioactive.’”
In recent years, there has been some hand-wringing in the German news media about the quality of television series.
Odar and Friese are aware that German television doesn’t have the sexiest reputation.
“I think the perspective from outside is that we have very talented people working here, but what we’ve been lacking is innovation,” Friese said. They note that “Dark” is a departure, not only because of its complex structure, but because it is a blend of two genres: crime and science fiction. “The problem is that Germans aren’t really big with suspension of disbelief. We have to break this realism wall to create more innovative content,” Friese said.
“We were uncool for a very long time,” Odar said. “But I think it’s changing.”