So, has anybody tackled Dark on Netflix?

[Nole Lou]

This might have jumped to the top of my favorite recent shows. I thought it was fantastic. I binged the whole thing over a few days.

I'm hesitant to say anything about it, as to not spoil anything about how it unfolds, at least until a few episodes in when what you're dealing with starts to come into view.

On the other hand, I want to get pretty explicitly into it, because it's probably not for everyone, and will be the best thing ever for others.

I'll say this much...it's a "mystery" series at it's core, not a straight drama or adventure. It's a German language series, so prepare to read subtitles. You can also choose the dubbed audio track instead, and I tried it, just because I like to look at my phone or whatever while I watch TV. But the dub was laughably bad. But I'm pretentiously biased for subs over dubs anyway, but if you're ok with dubs that might be watchable.

In one way I really wish this show had a traditional release schedule, allowing for discussion and analyzing like say True Detective. But I know if I hadn't binged it, it would have been nearly impossible to keep things even somewhat straight.

Only one piece of advice if you watch it...right from the beginning pay as close attention to every character as possible and try to establish the relationships in your mind. Almost nobody is a meaningless character. The show early on had several shots of family pictures in early episodes, and it clued me in that maybe I should try to stay on top of who is in what family etc., and I was mostly able to to keep the relationships straight. If you don't stay on top of that from the beginning...ouch. It would have been easier if it was an American production, which certainly would have had a much more diverse cast (like Lost), but in this show...so, so much white people.

 

[FSUTribe76]

This might have jumped to the top of my favorite recent shows. I thought it was fantastic. I binged the whole thing over a few days.

I'm hesitant to say anything about it, as to not spoil anything about how it unfolds, at least until a few episodes in when what you're dealing with starts to come into view.

On the other hand, I want to get pretty explicitly into it, because it's probably not for everyone, and will be the best thing ever for others.

I'll say this much...it's a "mystery" series at it's core, not a straight drama or adventure. It's a German language series, so prepare to read subtitles. You can also choose the dubbed audio track instead, and I tried it, just because I like to look at my phone or whatever while I watch TV. But the dub was laughably bad. But I'm pretentiously biased for subs over dubs anyway, but if you're ok with dubs that might be watchable.

In one way I really wish this show had a traditional release schedule, allowing for discussion and analyzing like say True Detective. But I know if I hadn't binged it, it would have been nearly impossible to keep things even somewhat straight.

Only one piece of advice if you watch it...right from the beginning pay as close attention to every character as possible and try to establish the relationships in your mind. Almost nobody is a meaningless character. The show early on had several shots of family pictures in early episodes, and it clued me in that maybe I should try to stay on top of who is in what family etc., and I was mostly able to to keep the relationships straight. If you don't stay on top of that from the beginning...ouch. It would have been easier if it was an American production, which certainly would have had a much more diverse cast (like Lost), but in this show...so, so much white people.

I’ll have to check it out some time. Unfortunately I’m WAY behind on my Netflix viewing. I’m only two episodes into the Punisher.

 

[tolkien1]

Nole Lou,

I'll give it a shot. I've posted a couple of threads asking for series recommendations and yours have been spot on. We only watch about an hour of TV a day so we we pick one show and watch it for a couple of weeks. I think we got recommendations from you for Luther, Happy Valley, and Fortitude. Enjoyed all of them. We'll give this a shot.

Thanks

 

[Nole Lou]

Nole Lou,

I'll give it a shot. I've posted a couple of threads asking for series recommendations and yours have been spot on. We only watch about an hour of TV a day so we we pick one show and watch it for a couple of weeks. I think we got recommendations from you for Luther, Happy Valley, and Fortitude. Enjoyed all of them. We'll give this a shot.

Thanks

Well, if you liked Fortitude, this should be up your wheelhouse then. A lot of similarities in feel and tone.

I still haven't really dived into Fortitude Season 2 though. I've got to get on that.

 

[tolkien1]

Well, if you liked Fortitude, this should be up your wheelhouse then. A lot of similarities in feel and tone.

I still haven't really dived into Fortitude Season 2 though. I've got to get on that.

We just finished season one last night so we'll start on season two tonight. We pretty much will start on a show and finish all the seasons before moving to another. On another note, I believe you are a fan of The Americans. I just saw that the final season will feature a time jump of 3 years at which point the father is no longer "on the job" but the daughter is becoming actively involved in the family business.

 

[daveynole]

Lou,

I want to echo Tolkien's comments. In fact, your repeated praise of Happy Valley caused me to revisit that show; I'd watched the pilot but it didn't grab me. Your recommendation sent me back for a second try, and that time I hit the subtitles because of the rapid dialogue that seemed to include a babel of different Brit accents. Superb show!

So I followed your post by checking out Dark, and so far I'm definitely in. Have gotten through the first three episodes and am considering rewatching them before moving on in an attempt to keep the characters straight, especially in light of episode three's major development. You're right, a little diversity among the many featured characters would have helped. Fewer members of the master race and more immigrants would have helped. Nonetheless, it's outstanding.

I'm watching in German with English subtitles. For some reason, dubbed English often seems to be very unsatisfactory; either the voice actors appear to be reading the phone book or the spoken dialog doesn't match the subtitles, or both.

Thanks again for the heads-up.

 

[kc78]

I'll give it a shot, but a lot of my tv watching is while I'm doing other things now. Not certain how well that will work with a subtitled show and I'm not about to try dubs as they drive me insane.

 

[Nole Lou]

We just finished season one last night so we'll start on season two tonight. We pretty much will start on a show and finish all the seasons before moving to another. On another note, I believe you are a fan of The Americans. I just saw that the final season will feature a time jump of 3 years at which point the father is no longer "on the job" but the daughter is becoming actively involved in the family business.

Yep, I'm a huge fan of The Americans. I do think it faltered a little bit this last season. The quality was still there, but the story line was just not tight enough. It had the feel of a middle season of a show that you get when the creators aren't exactly sure how long a run they've got and aren't exactly sure where they are going. I don't think that should be the case, it's not highly rated enough to last forever, so I would think that they'd be in end game mode, whether that's one more season, two, three whatever. Shows almost universally get better when the creators have the ending arc in mind, even if it's a ways out.

I like the sound of what you're describing...I think the show could use a shake up. But whatever they do, they need more Stan. Stan is one of my favorite performances on TV, and they need to move him back into the main spotlight like he was before this season. Would be great if they could get Oleg back to the U.S. or just get the band back together with him and Stan somehow.

 

[Nole Lou]

Lou,

I want to echo Tolkien's comments. In fact, your repeated praise of Happy Valley caused me to revisit that show; I'd watched the pilot but it didn't grab me. Your recommendation sent me back for a second try, and that time I hit the subtitles because of the rapid dialogue that seemed to include a babel of different Brit accents. Superb show!

So I followed your post by checking out Dark, and so far I'm definitely in. Have gotten through the first three episodes and am considering rewatching them before moving on in an attempt to keep the characters straight, especially in light of episode three's major development. You're right, a little diversity among the many featured characters would have helped. Fewer members of the master race and more immigrants would have helped. Nonetheless, it's outstanding.

I'm watching in German with English subtitles. For some reason, dubbed English often seems to be very unsatisfactory; either the voice actors appear to be reading the phone book or the spoken dialog doesn't match the subtitles, or both.

Thanks again for the heads-up.

Yep, subtitles on Happy Valley and Fortitude made the show for me with their crazy accents and colloquialisms. I can't remember what it was on Happy Valley, I think it was the pejoritive "scrote" that they used all the time that I never would have made heads or tails of. Hell, even knowing what it was I'm not sure I fully understand it, but I can take a guess with context.

I was definitely willing to give the dubs a shot in this case, but yeah, they were absurd. So incredibly fake. There's so much good voice acting now in animated features, I'm surprised they didn't invest the time/money to do it right, considering how much it will restrict the audience for what some would argue is their best original content to date.

If you've got the patience to watch the first three episodes again, it certainly wouldn't hurt. As I mentioned, I did pretty good with keeping the relationships straight, because the shots of family pictures kind of clued me in that would be important. But what I didn't do was follow the names as well as I should have. If I had it to do over, I would have stopped every time someone mentioned a name I didn't know and made sure I knew who was being referred to, or made sure every time a character was introduced, I caught their name. Maybe if you were going to watch it again, that's what you should do, make sure you register the name of every character that is brought in, even if they seem rather minor.

Because I'll say this...it's going to get a hell of a lot more challenging.

I really regret that this didn't get the True Detective/Lost treatment, because it would have been very helpful to get the break down after every episode. But trust me, if you go after one or two episodes to try to find a character list, you're going to spoil some of where it goes for yourself for sure. It would have been nice to be able to do that deep dive after every episode, if this had been on HBO or something.

 

[Nole Lou]

I'll give it a shot, but a lot of my tv watching is while I'm doing other things now. Not certain how well that will work with a subtitled show and I'm not about to try dubs as they drive me insane.

Yep, that's definitely not going to work. I kind of do the same, even if it's just social media or whatever. I bounced on a show called Deutschland 83 that was pretty cool, for that reason...mostly subtitled. It was a cold war drama set in Berlin, fiction but based around true events. Maybe I'll go back and try to finish it while I'm in my subtitled German phase.

But this would be pretty much impossible to follow without rapt attention. Plenty of times I thought I could sneak a peak at my phone and ended up having to rewind.

 

[Nole Lou]

As long as this is my thread for suggesting kind of obscure shows, I'll mention another that went under the radar.

I really, really enjoyed Search Party on TBS season 1. It's a much different tone, more of a comedy/mystery. The tone will either work for you or it won't. I found it both engaging and pretty funny. It isn't a brilliant mystery or a brilliant comedy, but as a combination it's pretty great.

Even more than the tone maybe, it will make or break on whether you can go with the central character played by Alia Shawkat (Maebe from Arrested Development). She's kind of a complicated and unique character, but I found her pretty relateable. However, I could see others having much less patience for her.

It's into Season 2 I believe, and I haven't caught back up with that. Not sure if I will, or wait until all the season is out and I can binge it.