Dark is a German tv show centered around a small rural German town that has been shaped through the ages by time travel. It recently concluded, and all three seasons are on Netflix. The best way I can describe this show is Stranger Things meets Back to the Future. Dark has an incredibly complex web of characters who over the years have interacted with each other. And since the show takes place over about 100 years, the audience gets to see the same characters throughout their entire lives. However, this complexity also comes at a price, as I found myself constantly having to look up who everyone in the show was in order to make sense of the whole thing.
Dark takes place in Winden, a quiet, sleepy, rural German forest town. However, children are beginning to go missing. After his father’s suicide, Jonas Kahnwald begins to investigate, and soon discovers Winden hides some incredibly sinister secrets.
Dark has one of the most complex time travel plots I’ve ever seen. This show rivals even Primer in that aspect. It shows how four families have interacted with each other for almost a century, and how certain members have travelled in time. This can vary in complexity and shock factor from a simple lesbian affair in the 50s to a person’s girlfriend being their aunt and her brother being their time traveling father. The main antagonist and main protagonist are technically the same person, just one is from the future. This show pulls quite a bit of twists, and it’s really quite entertaining to watch. Additionally, the acting is really fantastic all around, despite being in German.
However, Dark’s complexity is a bit of a double edged sword. While the twists and reveals leave you stunned, due to the sheer amount of characters, it’s very hard to keep track of just what the heck is going on sometimes. The audience has to remember generations of characters, characters who are seen at multiple ages in their life, alternative versions of those characters from another dimension, AND those same characters but older and evil. Frankly, it’s somewhat exhausting, and I feel they could’ve maybe not had as many characters as they did.
Overall, Dark is a weird, wacky, intense tv show, and I loved it. While I didn’t understand what was going on at every single moment, I understood enough to follow. It absolutely merits a watch. Additionally, on a side note this show has I think the most haunting intro ever. Simply watching that alone might leave you hooked.