Winden, a German town near a nuclear power plant, 2019. Teenager Jonas Kahnwald is angry that his father Michael committed suicide without explanation. Jonas' mother Hannah is having an affair with Ulrich Nielsen, a police inspector married to Katharina, with whom he has three kids: teenagers Magnnus and Martha (Jonas' ex-girlfriend) and the 10-year old Mikkel. Noah, a mysterious man from the future, recruits Bartosz, Jonas' friend and Martha's boyfriend. One day, Mikkel goes through an underground tunnel in the forest and emerges in 1 9 8 6. He stays there, is adopted by the Kahnwalds, renamed Michael and becomes Jonas' father. Jonas receives a letter from his late father, hinting at time travel, and goes through the tunnel, to 1 9 8 6, to try to bring Mikkel back. However, Jonas is kidnapped by Jonas 33 years in the future, who locks him up in a room. Ulrich and police officer Charlotte suspect power plant employee Helge (75), now in a retirement home, kidnapped the children 33 years ago. Ulrich goes through the tunnel and emerges in 1 9 5 3, just before the nuclear power plant was supposed to be built. Ulrich wants to find Mikkel, but decides to kill Helge (9) as a kid, hoping this will prevent him kidnapping kids when he grows up. However, Helge survives and wakes up in a basement. Ulrich is arrested by the police before he could return back to the present. Time travel is activated and a portal shows the teenage Jonas seeing Helge (9) in the basement. They reach out for each other, and Helge (9) lands in the room, while the teenage Jonas ends up in 2052.
One of the most hyped European productions by Netflix, German science-fiction time travel mystery series "Dark" is a highly complex, ambitious, intelligent and demanding work which blends in elements from "Steins;Gate", "Back to the Future", "La Jetee" and others, but manages to restructure and change everything enough to make it seem original and fresh, while the production values are so high they almost give an impression as if the viewers are watching an American show. However, the 1st season suffers from the frequent problem of modern long TV shows—it gets to pay off later on when everything connects in the end, but it takes too long for its set-up, which means that the viewers have to endure seven hours of dry exposition until it gets good. Movies or TV shows that make even their set-up entertaining or fun are a much more fluent watch. Directors and screenwriters Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese conjure up a bleak and clever story about predestination, fatalism and determinism, yet several of its solutions were already explored in previous time travel stories (for instance, when a character goes to do something to stop the time loop, but it only turns out his action actually started it in the first place).
It observes the relations between four families through three time periods seperated by 33 years—2019, 1 9 8 6, 1 9 5 3—and thus the viewers will have to focus twice than usual to catch which character is a grown up in one time period, and a teenager in the previous one, so one episode even had several characters presented in a split screen, to help show the young actor/actress on the left frame, and the older actor/actress on the right frame, playing their grown-up counterpart in the future. One old character, Helge, appears in all three due to his longevity, and several scenes actually get a different context after all the dots are connected (for instance, police inspector Ulrich wans to question the 75-year old Helge in bed, but the latter is scared of him, even though they met for the first time, until we find out Ulrich travelled back in time, to '53, and wanted to kill the 9-year old Helge because he wanted to stop him from kidnapping children when he grows up). Two plot twists in episodes 5 and 10 are stunning: the viewers have been given clues throughout the storyline, but are still surprised when these secrets are revealed, anyway. A few refreshing moments based on the viewers knowing more through a broader time perspective are sparse, but welcomed—in one memorable, we know that Ulrich and Katharina from 2019 are married and have three kids, and thus it is amusing when they are shown as teenagers in the 80s, where the teenage Katharina wants to have sex, but says to the teenage Ulrich that he must use condoms because she "doesn't want to have kids, never, ever". The 1st season of "Dark" is very good, and yet, since a lot of things were left unexplained, there is still a feeling that it went to overcomplicate and obfuscate these events a bit too much, while the best parts may yet to follow, after this arduous set-up is finally completed.
Grade:+++
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