Dark: Time is Very Important!

Dark is a German sci-fi series, which very much so lives up to its title. There is not much sunshine. There are three seasons, and they hold many ups and downs as regards excitement. Especially during season 3 you are often totally confused and lost due to the many character and time changes. But season 1 and season 2 are excellent and they hold you in an iron fist of excitement.

The storyline is briefly told – very briefly – that a boy disappears without a trace. The boy has with some older teenagers from the nearby provincial town spent some time near an entrance to a closed cave. The teenagers must leave the place in a hurry, and they forget the boy in their haste. The boy then mysteriously disappears.

Things rapidly escalate and subsequently several people vanish and as a consequence all the ghosts in the provincial town come out of the closet.  And believe me there are many.

The dominant themes which the series center around are time and guilt. Dark starts in the present, but soon moves back to the 80s, and then further back and then even further back. Then we from time to time move back to the present and then into the future. The characters that you think you know are not at all who you think they are. Who are guilty? Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? Those are some of the many questions.

However, these frequent jumps back and forth in time especially during the last season 3 were too much and I was totally lost when I could not any longer follow who, what and where the characters were. This unfortunately ruined my impression of the series which after season 1 and two was incredibly positive. Up until then I thought Dark was excellent. The storyline was brilliant and so were the actors and to be fair in the last part of Dark everything comes together but alas that is too late. My impression of the series was now so disturbed that my overall opinion turned into negative.

This should not deter me from recommending Dark as a watchable series. Go see it and preferably binge as many episodes as possible. You will stand a better chance then of keeping track of time, plot and characters.

You can watch Dark on Netflix.

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