Maybe it’s my love of time travel, but apparently I’m drawn to shows and properties in general that espouse the idea of everything being connected. I mean, quite literally, one of Marvel’s slogans is “It’s all connected” and the tagline for the show Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was “Everything is Connected”. Now there’s Dark. Yes, it actually begins with “It’s all connected”.  

I’d been hearing about Dark for a few months, even before it’s release on Netflix on December 1, with comparisons being made to Stranger Things. So I finally had a chance to binge it and I’m glad I did. It’s a German Netflix production that’s dubbed in English (the only subtitles are for newspaper headlines, book titles and some song lyrics). At 10 episodes, it’s worth watching if you enjoy the slow build, confusion and slight creepiness of the first season of ST. But Dark isn’t about an alternate dimension with horrifying creatures – it’s about time travel.

Set in a small German town, the general premise of the story involves children who have gone missing. It’s eventually discovered that these kinds of disappearances have happened before. And when the body of a dead child is found, there’s even more confusion when it’s not one of the currently missing children. There are also mysterious people visiting the town who don’t quite seem to fit in.

The time travel element in the show is a twist on ways we’ve seen it presented in the past. Though it works pretty well, I think it could have worked better with fewer layers to it. But the way the story is told was great, increasingly flipping from present day to the past as clues that are dropped early on begin coming to fruition. Some of the plot was melodramatic, but I think that might just be the German or European presentation of things. But considering how it all ends, with not everything neatly wrapped up, I’m looking forward to season 2.