Have you probably noticed the bevy of exceptional foreign-language TV series that have hit Netflix recently?
My personal favourites are from Spain — Elite, Gran Hotel, Velvet, Money Heist, The Cable Girls, High Seas and The House of Flowers, but then there is also Ragnarok (Norway), Call my Agent and A Very Secret Service (France).
However, there is one series that has managed to stay under the radar for three seasons — Dark from Germany. The country’s first-ever German-language original series.
The series, a science fiction thriller, rivals the likes of Stranger Things and is just as good, if not better.
It plays with the themes of time travel, confused teenagers, free will, responsibility and multigenerational trauma and centres around a local boy’s disappearance, which stokes fear in the residents of Winden, a small German town, that ties back to the same place in 1986.
In the first season, we meet Jonas who has just returned from a mental health facility in France after his father’s suicide.
Arriving back at school, everything has now changed, including the disappearance of the guy he used to buy weed from. Now, there are curfews, community meetings and his mother is having an affair with the lead detective in the missing person’s case.
The series focuses heavily on “time” as a concept and flits between 2019, 1986 and 1953.
Like any good teen show, there’s a love story too — and who doesn’t love a time-travelling sci-fi love story?
To delve deeper into the world of Dark, Netflix has created a website to untangle all of the clues from the series, which also includes a family tree and believe me, when I tell you. You’re going to need it.
Dark stars Louis Hoffman, Lisa Vicari, Maja Schöne, Jördis Triebel, Oliver Masucci, Andreas Pietschmann, Karoline Eichhorn and Mark Waschke.
All three seasons of Dark are streaming on Netflix now.
WATCH: Season 1 Official Trailer – Dark.