I will tell you now what I wish someone had told me: you really should try this show!
Dark is set in a German town littered with mysteries. It opens with an inexplicable suicide and soon expands to deal with a disappearance, decades-old unsolved crimes, mysterious figures arriving in town, and more. Much, much, more. Surprise is far from the only trick up Dark's sleeve, but spoiling any of the truly satisfying surprises just seems cruel, so I'll leave it at that.
Dark was Netflix's first German-language original series, but it feels like it was made by people who played close attention to a lot of American television, taking careful notes and learning valuable lessons. More than anything, I think it's taking its cues from early seasons of Lost, with an ever-expanding web of mysteries that are tightly entwined with characters and their histories. Unlike Lost, though, Dark rarely gets bogged down in the science-fiction puzzles to the detriment of the characters and their journeys. It's 26 episodes that always feels like they're heading somewhere, reaching a definitive and satisfying ending.
The show also feels strongly influenced by another Netflix show, Stranger Things. Here, the similarities are more a matter of tone, and of some superficial elements in the narrative. But while I personally soured on later seasons of Stranger Things, I only became more engrossed as I eagerly made my way through Dark. (My husband and I don't binge-watch things, generally... but rare was the night when we watched only one episode of Dark.)
Like I said, I don't want to spoil the experience for anyone. But I think I can give a few more specifics in praise of the show. The casting is superb. That "decades-old crimes" aspect of the plot does lead to time spent in the past, and so the same characters sometimes appear at different ages, played by different actors. The continuity in look and performance is absolutely top-notch, making strong connections for the viewer to latch onto. I'd go so far as to say that dual-casting of a role has never been done more effectively than it is in Dark.
The music is wonderful in enhancing the atmosphere of the show. The score by Ben Frost contains a number of eerie, repeating themes, and incredibly clever choices of instrumentation (if you let yourself stop and think about the choices being made). The structure of most episodes features a song (in English) just minutes before the final scene, and these montages are always a highlight both in presentation and in selection of the song for resonance.
The production values are outstanding. As the narrative sprawls, Dark features wilder and wilder settings, and each one is realized with compelling realism. Every time you might get to thinking "this is as big as the story gets; now I understand what Dark is," the story gets bigger. And each time, the production keeps up with no visible strain from the effort involved.
I would offer just two small caveats. First: while season two is unquestionably better than the already strong season one, season three dipped for me a bit in the middle. That last season has both a great opening and a solid ending, but arguably gets a little too tangled for its own good in the middle. (It's a rare moment where the series gets a little too involved in its sci-fi mysterious and relaxes its hold of the characters' narrative threads.) Second: I highly recommend watching it in the original German, with subtitles. We began episode one with the default English dubbing, but the voice-over performances grated on us enough that we changed over within the first few minutes... and we never looked back.
Overall, I give Dark an A-, and a strong recommendation. It's among my favorite genre series in recent memory.
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