Need a good TV show to binge? Why not watch the best show on Netflix, Dark.
A mind-bending show that deftly combines internal family drama with time travel, Dark is the rarest of things: a show without a single dip in quality. All three seasons rule in every way imaginable.
The Stranger Things comparison makes sense, but Dark is a very different show.
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Dark, at its core, is a mystery series. Much like Stranger Things -- the show it's most frequently compared to -- Dark's first season focuses almost exclusively on the search for a missing child. But in this show the child hasn't escaped to a parallel universe, but a different time 30 years in the past. Before long Dark is a show that operates across multiple different time zones and dimensions.
Dark has everything. It does complex, interweaving plot twists on a level that makes Westworld look like a pretend-clever show for children. It earns these twists by also being a delicately written study of broken familial interrelationships and small-town claustrophobia.
It's a show that juggles the risks that come with time travel narratives with ease. Dark's plot is complex to the point where I make a sport of waiting for it to completely fall apart. I spent three whole seasons waiting for Dark to drop the ball and collapse beneath its own weight, but it didn't.
This TV show is a miracle.
Probably the worst thing you could say about Dark is that it's pretentious. Unlike other time travel shows like, say, Outlander -- which revels in camp and sort of begs you to watch ironically -- Dark takes itself completely seriously. It's almost unrelenting.
Dark asks you to sincerely care about what's happening on-screen. It infuses its plot with multiple explicit references to Ariadne and the Bible. In most science fiction this would be enough to make my eyes detach from their socket and roll all the way backward into my brain, GidOnlone but Dark earns its delusions of grandeur by actually being good enough to sustain them.