Sunday 16 June 2019

Dark (Dunkel)


Yes, everybody, here we are: the hundredth post of Just One More Episode.  When I started this blogging business about two years ago, I had high hopes for the unprecedented and life-changing success it would bring me.  My content would be syndicated on national news sites, I’d be an in-demand podcast guest, maybe even a talking head on some sort of Channel 5 schedule-filling tat about the top 50 moments on TV when someone fell over.  Needless to say, none of that has happened.  I’m still a professional email-typer and open-plan office-dweller.  People do shout at me now across the vestibule occasionally though, proclaiming to like my blog while walking off in the other direction.  More often than not, they talk of having seen my promotion of the blog and take pains to tell me they haven’t read it.  So that’s good.  At least the half-hearted Instagram account has eight followers.  And there was the lady in New Zealand who really like my tweets about Bromans.  Even my life hasn’t changed that much – still an eternal renter while I await a completion date on my (a lot of) Help To Buy newbuild flat.  My solicitors are busy being ineffective.  But this isn’t about the banal details of my actual life (it mostly is), but about good telly.  So, what show merits the accolade of taking this blog into triple digits?  Dark.


Dark has probably haunted your Netflix menu persistently over the years.  Its lead image, a yellow-cagouled figure disappearing into a verdant cave, promises mystery and intrigue, but its position among so much else competing for your attention makes it a hard choice to pursue.  I chose to watch it because it’s in German and, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned, but my education culminated in me achieving near-native fluency in that language (as well as a passable ability to understand the odd word in French rap songs).  That reason is also significant enough in my life that I’ve picked this programme to occupy the position of blogpost number 100.  I don’t suppose this has been an appealing factor for a lot of you, especially as Dark seems, at first glance, to be a synthesis of many other shows.  The motif of a brightly coloured item of clothing brings to mind Jean’s anorak in fellow European fare, The Rain.  Making a wet and rainy climate look cinematic places it broadly in a league with The End Of The F***ing World.  The setting of a single town gripped by strangeness reminded me of The Returned (Les Revenants).  And finally, that strangeness of course draws comparison with Stranger Things.


Question: is Dark just a German Stranger Things?  Answer: a little bit, but it’s more than that.  I’ve recently been taking pains to point out to my intermittent readers that Just One More Episode doesn’t reveal any spoilers.  I’m careful not to let slip anything more than can be seen in a show’s trailer or basic synopsis in a TV guide.  There’s always enough inanity that you can share in the pure joy of my self-indulgent prose, even if you’ve had better things to do with your time than watch, for example, Riverdale or Jack Whitehall: Travels With My Father.  What becomes clear very early on is that Winden has a problem with missing children (a bit like Hawkins in Stranger Things). Episode one is a triumph in weaving together a cast of characters big enough to populate a whole town (because it’s basically the whole town), giving you enough about their past and present relationships to hook you in, and then setting up the jeopardy that starts us off from one riddle to the next.


Accompanying the furrowed brows of all these actors is a soundtrack that chimes in specifically to heighten the tension.  It has the rhythm of stomach rumbles, reminding you to concentrate on what’s unfolding before you: something important is about to be unearthed.  You can tell what type of thriller this is by whether people say thanks and goodbye at the end of phone calls.  They don’t.  A real-life chat typically concludes with a series of byes and see yous but, in Dark, the receiver simply drops from the actor’s face, while their expression conveys contemplation and mystery as they stare into the middle distance.  You might find yourself looking similarly vacant when a whole new cast appears in episode three.  A crucial element of Dark’s ambition (without giving away anything about its story) is that the action unfolds on three temporal planes, with the third instalment taking us to 1986 for the first time (cue nostalgia satisfaction for Stranger Things fans then…)


But let’s move on from that, before I inadvertently reveal more than I ought.  Each time the world of Winden expands, the quality of the drama prevents any dilution of your commitment.  Any ultimate resolution to Dark’s mysteries only ever seems further away, with each step towards it unlocking further nuggets to solve, yet there is no frustration, just intrigue.  You might, however, wonder why it rains so often and so heavily.  The cast are almost always soaked.  Maybe it’s to do with the imposing presence of the town’s nuclear power plant.  For fans of GCSE German among you, enjoy yourselves listening out for mentions of the Atomkraftwerk, essential vocabulary from the environment chapter of any language textbook memorised by people in their early thirties now, as part of a curriculum-bending effort to stop pollution by knowing how to talk about it in a foreign language.  Not sure that’s worked then, as the sea is full of your crisp packets (Blue Planet II) and the climate crisis rages (Our Planet).  Either way, pray the planet lasts until June 21st when series two of Dark is promised to us by our Netflix overlords.  Don’t worry about the rising oceans giving you damp socks though; catch up on series one now and the whole thing will feel like an interactive experience as you view each rain-drenched scene with your own wet ankles.

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