Dark - update after all three seasons

I have now watched the first season of this German Netflix sci-fi ‘thriller’ three times, the second season twice, and the third (final) season once. Endlessly captivating in spite of (or because of) its slow pace, Dark is gorgeous to watch and listen to (though the score was occasionally overwhelming) and features an intelligent screenplay and solid acting (some performances were less convincing than others). It sounds like a winner, and maybe it’s one of the greatest TV shows ever, or maybe it’s just pretentious pseudo-science and pop philosophy/psychology/theology masquerading as brilliant TV.

Created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese (who also wrote most of the episodes), Dark is nothing if not an enigma. Despite the hours I spent on it, I do not claim to have the foggiest idea what happened in this show. It is easily the most complex TV I have ever watched. I had the feeling that I couldn’t binge watch it fast enough to keep up even if I did nothing else but watch all 26 episodes back to back. Perhaps if I could watch all 26 episodes simultaneously (in alternate universes?).

Dark is a time-travel show as well as (spoiler alert) a parallel-world show. The same set of characters (there are 33 characters played by 73 actors) appear as their older and younger selves and travel to six major time periods. It’s possible to see the same character appear as three or four people in one scene. Utter lunacy! And yet I couldn’t stop watching it. Dark presents an an endless array of philosophical ideas that may not have been as profound as they sounded but nevertheless made me think a great deal (always a good thing for me). 

Here’s a sample of some of the show’s juicy quotes: “Man is a strange creature. All his actions are motivated by desire, his character forged by pain. As much as he may try to suppress that pain, to repress the desire, he cannot free himself from the eternal servitude to his feelings. For as long as the storm rages within him, he cannot find peace. Not in life, not in death. And so he will do what he must, day in, day out. The pain is his vessel, desire his compass. It is all that man is capable of.” “We’re not free in what we do because we’re not free in what we want. We can’t overcome what’s deep within us.” “We are all full of sin. No pure human being exists. But no matter what we do, we never fall any lower than into God’s hands.” “In short, the god mankind has prayed to for thousands of years, the god that everything is bound with, this god exists as nothing other than time itself.” “Life is a labyrinth: Some people wander around their whole lives looking for a way out, but there’s only one path and it leads you ever deeper, into the centre.” And so on.

From the beginning, Dark is full of menace and mystery, as one boy disappears and another suddenly appears (dead) in the vicinity of a vast cave system that lies beneath what is supposed to be the first German nuclear power plant (it seemed like a good idea to build a nuclear reactor on top of a cave?). Both the mystery and the menace build from there until it is revealed that the town of Winden is at the heart of battle (supposedly between light and shadow) for the control of time itself. 

Dark is not afraid to mention all the paradoxes related to time travel and so the writers feel free to create more paradoxes than you can possibly keep up with. Perhaps Dark is as brilliant as it sounds - a work of pure genius. Perhaps not. The cinematography is stunning, the score uses a variety of sounds (including Inuit throat singing) to great effect, often giving the show a horror feel. The acting is solid but some actors (including the young star, who won awards for this role) give less-than-convincing performances. If you think you’ve read this here already, it’s just deja-vu - a glitch in the matrix. It means the universe is trying to tell you something.

The show’s biggest flaws are a number of violent scenes that seem to have no purpose and are not well-explained. Those flaws are a big enough problem to prevent me from giving Dark four stars, at least until someone explains to me why they were necessary.

So there it is. If you enjoy mind-bending shows like LOST and Fringe (and a great many people do) and you don’t mind a slow pace and not having a clue what’s going on, then Dark is a must-see show for you. Everyone else will probably want to give it a pass. As for me, I had a great time. A solid ***+. My mug is up.