"Dark" (the Series)

Netflix went and signed up some German production company to produce a science-fiction-like series entitled 'Dark'.  I've sat and watched two of the episodes (you can only get it via Netflix).  Most of the various series that they've produced have been intriguing, creative in terms of the script, and surprising results with actors hired.

'Dark' isn't quiet of the same variety.

The basic mystery story?  Well....some German kids in this town of Winden are just plain disappearing.  The story is laid out in generational phases (1950s, 1980s, now).  Just about everyone in this town is leading some kind of double-life, and everyone seems to have some super-secret past.  Tossed into the middle of this story is a cave in the woods, which happens to be next to a nuclear plant (yeah, what are the odds of that).  The nuke plant is also not a company managed operation, but run by some German family. 

The bulk of the two episodes I've watched....unfold around four German families, and their missing kin-folk.

Cops don't see to be capable of doing much of anything, other than writing reports.

At some point in episode two....some dead kid from the 1980s is finally recovered now (2017)....still dressed in his 1980s attire and looking pretty freshly dead, although he's been missing for thirty-odd years and doesn't appear to have aged.

If you asked me how close to copying Twin Peaks....this series was attempting, then I'd go and suggest that it's fairly close, but without any humor.  You could generally count on a dozen laughs out of every single Twin Peaks episode made.  In 'Dark'?  Well....yeah....Germans don't build humor into story-telling devices like this.

Another season?  After wrapping up the ten episodes, there was enough interest to suggest a second season. 

The thing about all this effort is that it's proving that Germans (especially those under the age of thirty)....want more science-fiction (something that ARD/ZDF, the two public TV networks, can't deliver). 

It's a topic that I've noticed over the past decade and why so many US science-fiction series are popular with German youth.  While I can be critical over the story-plot of 'Dark'....I can respect the chances that the production crew took, and the initial steps being taken to ease more science-fiction into German productions. 

And I suspect that somewhere under Dark's German nuke plant....there's some time portal but it's best that we don't reveal too much of the whole story.