The German Stranger Things - Dark

I tried this and I liked it so far, but the live English voice overdubbing is kind of … heinous. I should turn subtitles on but I like to work while I am watching and having to read subtitles forces my attention to the screen too often.

It is awfully European in tone, lots of avant-garde images and music mixed in here, versus the humor of Stranger Things. It is overall a heavier show, but I dig the sci-fi small town thriller angle.

I watched this, and we should discuss further once you have watched the season. This is a show where any meaningful discussion is full of spoilers.

I really enjoyed this. It does pay to go with subtitles on and German language. You might get a little lost with generational family names. I did even being able to read them.

Even as a German it was sometimes hard to follow who is who. And it is definitely not Stranger Things besides some superficial similarities.

I’m hoping to watch this soon but definitely won’t be going with any English dub.

FTFY. Yeah, I can see how subtitles would clash with that.

And there’s me thinking you just had an issue with Britishness! ;-)

Yeah the comparisons with Stanger Things don’t really extend beyond the 80s scene-setting of the first few episodes. Otherwise it’s much closer to The Returned or something like that. It’s also much more concerned with the relationships between all its many characters than any central core family, although there is one, or even the mystery.

I absolutely loved it.

I did wonder that. I remember mentioning The Returned when someone was asking about other shows ‘like Stranger Things’. It’s not really like Stranger Things either, but it’s certainly a decent consideration. I enjoyed The Returned for the most part but by the end of the second season it felt glacially slow and long-winded, and I say that as someone who’s usually very patient.

Anyway, yeah, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Dark so I’m looking forward to watching it.

While I’m a compulsive multi-tasking TV watcher, I really recommend you a) turn on the German audio, and b) give this your full attention. You’re really going to get lost if you’re not paying close attention to it. There are dozens of characters, many of which appear at different ages, and they’re all important.

Eh they kinda fucked up the ending so now I don’t care.

Pretty much all of my friends complained about this in a “I regret watching this show now” way so much that I’m really tempted to check out Dark now just to see what’s going on there.

I think it depends on what exactly you mean by ending. I thought the main story ended just fine. What they did after that to make a second season possible, I’m less happy about, but I can also ignore it and it makes no difference to my enjoyment of what went before. Just think of it like the alternate endings of Army of Darkness.

I’m halfway through episode 3 and sort of liking it but also really starting to feel the “wait, who is that?” setting in. I’m trying not to let it slow me down but I know I’m missing connections and nuance and it makes me feel old & dumb.

Meanwhile, I’m reading The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell which also jumps around characters and time-lines. Come on, intellect! Keep up!

I finished this a week ago or so and loved it. I have no idea what issues you guys had with the ending. Maybe I need to go watch it again but I don’t recall anything being poorly done at the end of the season and I’m looking forward to season 2.

How so? What happened to the dad stuck in the 1950s? He just dies there in jail? So many questions.

Season two, if it happens (which it really needs to) has a lot of explaining to do.

Good news because it was renewed for season 2

They definitely imply that he’s stuck there and dies in prison after the beatings. The style of the show so far leads me to believe this is misdirection, though.

I really like this show overall. I do agree with those above who thought the people were hard to keep track of, but I felt like by the last few episodes they had done a fairly good job of connecting and identifying people for me (though they were sometimes very unsubtle.)

I see it as successfully answering many questions while opening many new ones. The questions asked in the very beginning of the series are all answered in some basic way, I think. The answer to most questions appears to be that there’s yet another element of the time loop which was caused by a later event circularly. However, that didn’t feel too repetitive to me yet, though I imagine it will before too long without some real variation.

This series was awesome.

I liked it except the ending was really bad in the sense of being a super obnoxious “and now LET THERE BE A SEQUEL!” twist.

You gotta stick the damn landing.

I think all the Qt3 figure skaters can appreciate this.

We doing spoilers here, or do we gotta use the little tags?

I wanna talk about the actual story.

I’m three episodes in, and it’s pretty trippy to see a recognizable representation of Germany in the 80’s for me, since I spent about a year and a half all told living there in the late 70’s to mid -80’s. Seeing how the internet-savvy kids of today there (apparently) constantly pepper their speech with English words like “bullshit” was surprising to me until I thought about it for half a second–the Germany of no web nor smart phones that I knew doesn’t exist anymore.

I’m interested to see how they portray the early 1950s, which I can imagine must have been a really weird time–less than ten years after the crushing defeat at the hands of the Allies, and the division of the country.

I was trying to figure out where I’d seen the actor who plays Ulrich, and it turns out he played time-displaced Hitler in the satire Look Who’s Back (Er ist wieder da).