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.
