Several years ago, I’m gonna guess around 2018, my wife and I started watching Dark, a German science fiction series that was picked up by Netflix. We liked it very much. I can’t remember how many episodes we watched; probably just three or four, and then we got distracted. Somewhere around that time, my sister and her husband came in from China for a visit. They were also watching Dark, but were several episodes ahead of us. We had a good time talking about the show, but didn’t watch it together. I’m pretty sure they went home and completed all three seasons of the series. We moved on to other things. Now and again I’d think of it and say to myself that we should pick it up again, but at some point it felt like we’d have to start it all over, and that just made me put it off indefinitely.

We haven’t subscribed to Netflix in a long while. There are just too many other streaming services with better stuff, but my daughter wanted to watch some anime that is only on Netflix, so we recently picked it up again. Dark started calling to me again. Initially, I figured I should watch it with my wife since that’s how we originally started it. But the thing is, we already have a long list of shows we are watching together; to start another one would be trouble. We have a hard enough time keeping up with our other shows. And a series like Dark is pretty tense; that means she won’t want to binge-watch it. Besides, it had been so long since we were watching it that she won’t mind me going ahead without her. Right?

I watched the entire first season in three days.

It is a complicated show to discuss without getting bogged down in the details. There are a lot of characters, and the show takes place during at least two different time periods – 2020 and 1987 – though as the series progresses, more time periods will enter into the picture. It more or less follows the same characters over these various periods, but different actors portray them in the different periods. That gets a little confusing. I’ve come to realize I have a slight case of facial blindness. I recognize people I’m close to – my family, friends, etc. – but people I only know casually disappear from my memory banks. I have a terrible time remembering actors in a series and character names. I spent a lot of this series unsure of who was who. I suspect I’m not alone in this, for as I say, there are a lot of characters, and they are played by different actors depending on the time period.

But I’m starting on a negative. Despite having difficulties knowing who was who and who had done what, this is still a brilliantly crafted show. It takes place in a small German town, one with the country’s first nuclear power plant. A young boy goes missing, sending the town into a tailspin. Especially distraught is his father, whose own brother went missing when they were boys some 33 years ago. More children go missing. More ties are found to that 33-year time gap.

I don’t think it is really a spoiler to say that this show involves time travel and a mysterious cave. That is definitely my jam. What I really love is how the series connects the timelines and these characters. It reminds me quite a bit of Stephen King’s It in the way the timelines echo into one another. Everybody has a dark secret, and they start bubbling to the surface. It also reminded me quite a bit of the first season of Stranger Things, which no doubt influenced this series since it came out just a few years later.

I’m really not sure how to talk about this show without digging a little too deep into the plot. And I don’t want to do that. Not now, anyhow. It starts a little bit slow. This is definitely a character-driven series, not one overly reliant on big reveals or twists. There aren’t any monsters exactly, but strangers are lurking about.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and am truly looking forward to Season Two.