The Dark series is challenging, frustrating and mysteriously enjoyable

I have been trying to get my poor old head around the German supernatural series The Dark on Netflix. If you haven't seen it, think of a cross between Lost and Stranger Things (and if you haven't seen either of those, then you probably won't be interested in the rest of this post).

Lost was complicated, not to mention counter-intuitive, frustrating and inexplicable. The Dark is all that too, but multiplied by a factor of n, where n is, let's say 33, for reasons that will become apparent. It's also produced in German but dubbed into English (not subtitled), probably the first dubbed film I have seen in decades, and I don't really like that aspect of it, although arguably it is a minor quibble.

How to describe the series in very few words? The fictional German town of Winden is set deep in what looks like the Black Forest, unremarkable except for its exceptional ordinariness. Oh, and the nuclear power station that dominates it and its residents. The series mainly follows various generations of four interlinked families. 

And I say generations advisedly, because deep in the caves below the power station is a portal, or perhaps series of portals, to other time periods separated by 33 years. So, when children start disappearing in 2019, the events are suspiciously similar to disappearances 33 years earlier, in 1986.

When we follow the disappeared kids back to 1986, it becomes apparent that people and events from 1953 are also implicated (and, later 1920 and even 2052). The adults from 2019 are in their teens in 1986, and backstories are filled in, with some surpises and shocks. It becomes something of an intellectual game to figure out who is who in the different time periods. When characters from 2019 start interacting with 1986 (and 1953 and 1920 and 2052!), things start to become pretty complex. I confess to having looked up online explainers, plot summaries and family trees (like this one and this one), but they only help so far.

There are also a whole load of time paradoxes involved too, with the future influencing the past, characters meeting their past or future selves, young children becoming fathers to their old playmates, etc. Time machines and black holes pop up (well, of course they do!), and strange coincidences abound. There is a fair bit of philosophizing about the nature of time and human nature and religion and free will and families and who knows what else.

Early in Season 2 (as far as I have ventured thus far), a shadowy organization of Travellers is revealed, which is probably nefarious, but who knows? And I'm sure that later upon layer of complexity, false leads and dead ends are bound to multiply as the series goes on.

And am I enjoying it? Ye-es... Part of it is the challenge of figuring out connections, and fitting the jigsaw pieces together. But it is not a passive process, and if you just try and watch it as pure entertainment, you will probably end up pretty frustrated and disappointed. Will I finish all three seasons? Only time will tell...

UPDATE

The Dark officially jumps the shark in Season 3, as 1888, 1920, 1953, 1986, 2019 and 2052 get jumbled up completely, and a new alternative version of the world in a parallel universe gets thrown into the mix too. The action dashes around between times and universes, seemingly at random, with little or no warning. At one point, four different versions of the same person, from different time periods and different worlds, are together in the same room, trying to figure out whether the apocalypse should go ahead or not. 

Confusion reigns. People die and then reappear alive. Interminable silences and deep meaningful looks reassure us that this is definitely not Kansas (or Hollywood). A hundred different characters stare each other out, sometimes across split screens. Phrases like "quantum entanglement" and "the God particle" get thrown around with gay abandon and with no particular scientific justification, and the sentence "What are you saying?"is repeated ad infinitum, only to be ignored. Pretty much nothing gets resolved.

But I did finish it, and that must count for something. Mustn't it?

Oh, and spoiler alert: there actually was a resolution.