Hacker Cinema
Dark
2017 · TV series · 3 seasons
Created by Baran bo Odar, Jantje Friese
CrimeDramaScience FictionFantasyMystery
A missing child sets four families on a frantic hunt for answers as they unearth a mind-bending mystery that spans three generations.
37 positive7 negative14 neutralfrom 58 commenters
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63 comments on Hacker News
Some of my favourite movies are German - Das Boot, or Lola rennt. Also series, like Dark.
> I struggle to remember hardly anything memorable from Netflix, especially their movies
For me there have been a few movies, off the top of my head:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold_the_Dark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irishman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraction_(2020_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Thinking_of_Ending_Things
In addition the first seasons of The Witcher and Altered Carbon, and the show Dark.
I canceled my subscription around 2020 though, got so fed up by the UX, so haven't watched much since.
I was thinking of House of Leaves reading the other comments here, mostly because something like an infinitely long tunnel to nowhere hidden in the walls of your house would actually be scary to me, whereas normally occupied spaces being empty and long winding indoor hallways are far more mundane. My wife has gotten into backrooms lore quite a bit in the past few years and it's always struck me as a strange thing to find eery. I've been an early morning runner for much of my life, worked overnight shifts at a theme park, closing at a mall, been in the tunnels beneath Disneyland and downtown Dallas. Worked in stores that hadn't opened yet and had nothing in them. There was nothing scary or eery about any of those things. It seems like an effect of the photographs and presentation more than the reality of the physical places. House of Leaves is scary specifically because it can't be real. Another example is something like the wormhole to 1987 and 1954 at the end of a cave in Dark. Yeah, that's scary, because nothing like that exists and you have no idea what to expect going into it.
Ironically enough, I first read this book when I worked at Disneyland, at an attraction with tunnel access, that no longer exists, and I no longer have the book because I loaned it to a girl I worked with there who never gave it back. She and I hung out in those tunnels during breaks.
Also interesting to me seeing other responses about found footage, given the guy who first recommended this book to me was a friend from college who covered his dorm room in bizarre free-form prose that switched between play style and novel style during a manic episode, then tore it all down later, set it on fire, and pieced together what survived as the strangest pseudo-poetry that somehow still had a lot of real words in it, kind of nature's "found poem." This book was probably written around the same time Blair Witch Project first came out and this guy also lived next to the real Greenway Trail in Burkittsville, which was also not particularly scary to see in person. I kind of doubt that was really the first example of a found footage film but it's the first I'm aware of. Wikipedia is saying The Connection from 1961 is the first.
I cancelled Netflix long ago, they started cancelling their best shows (like 1899, etc) and producing absolute garbage. I mean just look at the quality of early/peak Netflix to now. Stranger Things is a great example, the decline is visible not just in the story but in the visuals. The documentaries are also bad now, I watched the "Manosphere" at someone's house, and while you can agree with the premise that these people are deranged, it was clearly a cash grab and didn't really move the needle. Then the catalogue has been gutted, and it's just mostly garbage now. Just awful stuff.
The last truly remarkable series they had was Dark. Everything since has slid into being for low attention span people on their phones, and for that reason I no longer give it my attention, or money. I guess it's working out for them, since they keep printing money...but I think it won't last forever. Look at Disney, the decline can come quick once the cracks turn into fault lines.
I cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions everywhere inside their apps I would've cancelled any remaining subscription at the latest.
And the TV show Dark
I wrote a Python script which could turn any Youtube video into the opening sequence of Netflix's Dark.
Highly recommended to watch btw
If you haven't already seen, give the Netflix Show "Dark" a watch: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5753856/
Tangentially related: Dark. 3 seasons of sci-fi parallel-world-travel intensity with a satisfying ending.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5753856/
Westworld season 1 & 2 are pretty spectacular too if you missed it. Same producers made the Peripheral, and their adaptation of Fallout is coming in 2 weeks which looks fun.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/V-mugKDQDlg?feature=shared
I loved Severance so much and I'm not sure anything else better will be along for a while, but there is plenty of good stuff out there to pass the time.
It's a big problem because their catalog is also so spotty.
They should probably be ordering seasons in batches. Show runners don't really have much of a say, if they're told "okay we can give you one season and see how it goes" they're gonna say yes.
But in the case of 1899 was also a worse situation, to me, because the team had already proved themselves in another series (Dark) which was widely successful, except it didn't get successful until later on. These sort of series do require a bit more attention, people are not going to binge watch them like they do Wednesday. And that's okay (except apparently for Netlfix it's not okay).
And, I mean, I get it. Netflix strategy seems to be much more about optimizing a function that tries to minimize quality and maximize viewership. They literally don't care about high quality products. In fact, I would say, high quality products might even be undesirable as they might raise the bar of people's expectations.
I'm wondering whether Netflix has found out that it's target audience is shifting, just like what happened with Facebook. It is my understanding that people aged 55+ is now the main audience of Facebook. What is now the main audience of Netflix?
Cooking shows, cartoons and documentaries cost a fraction of a tv show but are still watched.
Personally, when I have 15—30 min to watch something, I prefer some food show with no strings attached instead of having to watch a specific show and having to remember what happened last time with the protagonist and the antagonist. (i.e. Dark)
I would say the TV show : Dark.
In my opinion it’s one of the most complex thing I have ever watched.
I don’t want to tell too much about it to keep the surprise
Edit: Movies, unsorted, from the top of my mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_of_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter%27s_Bone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) , seen before Covid, deemed to be realistic, and therefore better than stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_Sign_(film) somewhere in between. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV_(1974_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_(film) The remakes of the Planet of the Apes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later a little less so, though it had some great scenes of flying into London City Airport and the modern parts around that. Bladerunner in the original versions, the remake not so much. 2001: A Space Odyssey, the intro and first parts, spaceflight to the moon and such, the rest not. Too boring. I liked the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two better, actually. Avatar. Part one only. All of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise) with the exception of the crossover stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) for the almost cyberpunkish fuckedupness of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_Untold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropia_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southland_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_(2000_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(2007_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_(1987_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Zero_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecop Ron Silverman Badass! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Blonde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_Night_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowing_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_(1998_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adjustment_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeforce_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Protocol_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(2009_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypher_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Tapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Seduction
TV-Series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series) and the remake linked from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Pines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_(American_TV_series) and its prequel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_(TV_series)
WESTWORLD!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_(TV_series) Praimfaya! Yeehaa! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpart_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon_(TV_series) All of Black Mirror! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Skies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devs_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raised_by_Wolves_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83 and sequels. ÄXZÄLLÄNNT! JAWOLLJA! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Night_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2019_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Dome_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(2009_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica
This all began about 2006 with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2004_TV_series) after having abstained from possessing a TV, or watching that by other means (with some exceptions for news and documentaries) since 1996, and mostly no cinema either.
That stuff rehooked me in a binge-watching session. Shit happens :-)
Do yoo vanna häff fries wiff thät?
/nerdsnipe off
Sounds like the "Dark" TV show on Netflix.
Dark was terrific. Time travels and parallel worlds. Deutschland '83 (in particular) but also '86 and '89 were quite decent - about a young German becoming a Stasi superagent of sorts.
Oh, and while you're at it, get Das Boot if you haven't already, also available as a TV miniseries.
As for movies, you could do a lot worse than picking up a few Wim Wenders movies - say, Der Himmel über Berlin or Alice in den Städten.
Oh, if you pick up Der Himmel über Berlin, consider picking up In weiter Ferne, so nah! as well. Same universe, but more run-of-the-mill than Himmel über Berlin, which is probably the most poetically beautiful movie I have ever seen.
My personal quality bar I guess? It actually started quite well, but second half of the series drags down the average in terms of story/screenwriting/camera/VFX. It doesn't stand near the likes of Foundation, Mrs. Maisel, Mr. Robot
Doing TV is a marathon, perhaps Dark showrunners are more of sprinter people and should do movies instead.
> They're now just padding numbers with cheap foreign content, mostly from eastern Europe, India, and Korea
Netflix gets reputation from good content, not the number of shows, the primary marketing has switched from size of library to range. 1000 TV shows mean less than one Seinfeld or The Office.
It's not padding just because you don't know the language they're speaking.
Also Dark, Casa de Papel and Squid Game were huge. I will agree on one point though, the dubbing is criminal.
I'm wondering how much of the critique in the article is down to the Arri Alexa look - it's pretty distinctive, so much so that I can usually pick out if a show or film was shot in it (latest example was watching "Dark" and I double checked, and indeed, it's an Arri Alexa prod).
It's slow. I love dark, probably my favorite tv show, still 1899 is slow. That being said, it's still looking like an amazing show, I like slow, but it was way too slow, but not to the point of canceling. They would have improved with the next season. Bah, I'm so disappointed in Netflix.
It seems like only books get endings. Isn't there a way to read books in a shared way, like tv, so that I could do that with my wife?
I told friends and family to wait for season 3 before watching 1899 and to start with Dark. I canceled my Netflix sub after they canceled 1899 and won't return to anything but torrents for Netflix content.
I can imagine if Dark had been cancelled after one season folks would have said the same as you did here. Yet seasons 2-3 were unexpectedly additive to the whole story.
I avoid anything by Abrams or Lindelof at this point because they are emblematic of this writing formula. You can see it in Lindelof's The Leftovers, Abrams' Star Wars, and of course LOST. It's also present in any pilot they help create, for example Once Upon A Time.
I agree with your deconstruction: these shows are optimized for selling an engaging pilot episode with only a back of the napkin roadmap for the rest of the show. The finale comes only when there's no more money to be made.
I'm very excited by writers like Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese who are able to write interwoven plots comparable to LOST, but with cohesive endings. Check out Dark for an example.
I’m 41 and I’m utterly baffled by my 24 year-old SO’s interest in binging an apparently infinite litany of TV shows from streaming services. I’ve watched the first six seasons of Game Of Thrones, the first season of Dark, all of The Expanse (reading the last book of the final trilogy now), His Dark Materials (because I read the book) and Andor. That’s it. I watched some Star Trek TNG & DS9 as a kid and was horrified by what snippets of Discovery and Picard I came across. I find the bulk of modern entertainment to be an utter insult to viewers.
Disney+'s marquee show is The Mandalorian which has been quite great so far but even that can't be stretched for too long. I don't see it going beyond a few more seasons. At least with its competitors like Netflix, it has a fantastic library of so many show like House of Cards, Stranger Things, Dark, Squid Game and a bunch of stuff for almost every demographic possible. HBO probably has an unparalleled library of shows and movies. Disney+ shows don't have the same kind of rewatchability. For example, they fumbled extremely hard with the Obi Wan show, which could have been another potential cultural zeitgeist like the Star Wars movies if they probably cut down the filler and did some more rewrites to improve the script and released it as a movie (either in theater or as a Disney+ exclusive)
Disney+'s marquee show is The Mandalorian which has been quite great so far but even that can't be stretched for too long. I don't see it going beyond a few more seasons. At least with its competitors like Netflix, it has a fantastic library of so many show like House of Cards, Stranger Things, Dark, Squid Game and a bunch of stuff for almost every demographic possible. HBO probably has an unparalleled library of shows and movies. Disney+ shows don't have the same kind of rewatchability.
Some TV series aren't available everywhere. As an example, I'm currently watching "Dark", a wonderful 2017 German series (think about a grittier, darker, Stranger Things) that was dubbed in English but still doesn't seem to be available in other parts of Europe.
There are also other more legit usages of BitTorrent: I use it often to download Linux install images so that the network load is distributed among users and I do not tax excessively the servers.
Been going on for a while.
r/DataHoarder (of course) post for this news last week - commenters list minute changes they've noticed like reruns being cut for advertisements and copyright: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/w38e1z/stranger_things_4_creators_reveal_theyve_secretly/
In other Netflix shows:
- 13 Reasons Why: suicide removed,[1] song replaced (edit: coinciding with condemnation of the show by the artist[2])
- Dark: details changed for continuity with later seasons[3]
[1] https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=378736
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/CSHFans/comments/8tloai/oh_starving_was_removed_from_13_reasons_why/
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/DarK/comments/ctbsbd/apparently_some_mistakes_have_been_corrected/
Feels like (IME) there's a rather high incidence of discontent over decisions "from above" among the shows listed: The OA being cancelled, 13 Reasons having three seasons too many, speculation(?) that Dark's wonky pacing at the end was due to being approved for too limiting a number of episodes...
Dark was infuriating to watch. Visually stunning, great characters and performances, but ultimately an intentionally obfuscated and meandering story that only ends up disappointing you.
It's kind of similar to Westworld season 1 or Lost -- there's this style of storytelling where you drop a bunch of interesting clues to lead you towards possible theories about whats really going on, and then all of those threads are dropped on the floor as if they never mattered. I find it abusive and disrespectful to the viewer.
Narcos and Narcos: Mexico were both good. Dark, Katla, Frontera Verde. I guess those are all non-English speaking, or in Narcos' case, mixed language. As long as you don't hate subtitles, there's been good stuff. Russian Doll, Big Mouth, and Arcane were all pretty terrific among English speaking. Brand New Cherry Flavor wasn't mind-blowing, but more than worth watching. Same with Stranger Things. That's just content from the last couple years.
Netflix honestly has plenty of good content. You just have to not use the in-app recommendation system at all and find content through traditional sources, i.e. word of mouth, professional critics, and industry publications, then search directly. As long as they allow you to find a title by name when you already know the name, they're fine.
> Are you really that shocked if we reframe this as you not enjoying a game that started out as a niche Half-Life mod, but enjoying a television show made by the most popular television network amongst young adults?
No, I am okay with that :). There are some niche things (the OA, Dishwasher vampire smile) I definitely like and some popular things I really dislike (GoT and Stranger things come to mind). On that note: no one around me (IRL) seems to like Rick and Morty :(.
> That the only stuff you like is American, while the stuff you dislike is entirely foreign, shouldn't come as a surprise, either. Pop culture isn't global, not yet.
Well, for what it's worth I am neither American nor living in the US :). At the moment I am into scifi german tv shows (Dark and Tribes of Europa) (buuuut also waiting for the new Star Trek Pike TV show while snobing Star Trek Michael).
Check out "Dark". I can't explain it without spoiling things but there's a significant twist a few episodes in and it goes down a wild sci fi path.
IMHO, a little of column A and a little of column B. It's happening from both sides.
As quantity goes up, cultural relevance of any particular single show goes down.
Thus it becomes harder to run a platform on "one" hit, thus everyone turns to the Netflix model of a billion micro-targeted shows, thus demand for content becomes a series of niche requirements, and anything actually creative has to percolate through them (a la Joker's "Sure, I'm a superhero movie" or La Casa de Papel's "Sure, I'm a Spanish Ocean's Eleven" or Dark's "Sure, I'm a German Stranger Things").
That's hard, and so what you actually get for the majority of content is the media equivalent of a box of Crayola crayons -- 256 different colors, with zero depth under the surface.
Netflix is screwed.
It used to be that if you wanted to watch a movie, you could find it on Netflix, put it in your DVD queue and in a few days receive the DVD in the mail. Their inventory was really good, (with some exceptions) and the service had pretty fast turnaround. Phase 1.
Then broadband started becoming more available, so streaming became a natural extension. Here's where Netflix faced bigger challenges. Initially, IP owners were happy to sell streaming rights for pennies since they didn't have any idea of the real value. Netflix leveraged this to build up an even bigger catalog that wasn't constrained by the number of DVDs in their inventory.
Netflix started to dabble in producing (and buying) content for their streaming. Good stuff like Stranger Things. The Crown. Dark. Babylon Berlin. And IP owners started raising the prices for renewals for movies and series in their catalogs. Netflix decided to cheap out on the quality of their shows. And they started to cut down on their DVD catalog as well.
Now you have all of the IP owners with their own streaming services, so Netflix will find it really hard to stream anything but the crappiest stuff. And they've shown little ability to consistently produce quality series or movies.
Contrast this with ATV+. Apple knew that it had a huge potential customer base, but that licensing IP wasn't going to be sustainable; whatever they streamed had to be exclusive. So they started slow, trying to replace HBO for high quality content. And they had some meh shows like "See." Not bad, but not HBO. Then "The Morning Show," followed by "Ted Lasso." Now they're starting to get some traction. Having an infinite amount of money always helps, but they became pretty good at saying no. "For All Mankind" grabbed a chunk of sci-fi viewers. Greyhound captured the war nerds. Slowly, carefully, they've been building up a pretty solid catalog. Now you have shows like "Servant," "Slow Horses," "The Mosquito Coast," "Foundation."
Cap it off with a series and a movie that have set ATV+ on par with any streaming service: Severance and Coda.
Now ATV+ will never have the catalog that Disney+ has. They might be fine with that. But where does this leave Netflix? Netflix has no serious movies that could compete for an Oscar. They don't seem to have the ability to create must see TV anymore. Perhaps they're too driven by algorithms to give the viewer what Netflix "thinks" they want? I just can't see a path forward for Netflix as other than crappy shows. Even with their foreign content, they face increased price pressure and competition from the other SVODs.
There's Dark and Altered Carbon Season 1. Everything Everywhere All At Once just came out in theatres and that's supposed to be crazy Sci Fi (not supposed to go in knowing much about it)
I've only ever been on one Reddit discussion, about the TV show Dark trying to find out some info that nobody was actually able to answer. So I'm not as familiar with the different discussion boards as you are - maybe you talked with a different rasmussen there and you just think it's me? There are a lot of them out there.
See the German TV show Dark for in interesting take on what could happen if they somehow became cyclic.
> I came up with this years ago, but have only ever seen something like it explored once: in the TV show 'Dark'.
Doraemon, a Japanese children's cartoon (1970s to 1990s), created by Fujiko F Fujio, who is actually very well-versed in physics and science, has used something like this as a plot point in several different chapters/episodes and some movies. It doesn't actively call them "meta-stable time loops", since its target audience is children, but the idea and concept is there. Growing up watching and reading this series, I've learned more and more from it as I rewatch/reread old chapters/episodes, every time. I absolutely love it.
I've actually thought a lot about this, in particular because I had a dream involving Novikov self-consistency principle. I think the base idea behind self-consistency principle is that it prevents grandfather paradoxes but allows bootstrap paradoxes. In other words, stable time loops are allowed but unstable ones aren't. I submit that it is possible to have meta-stable time loops such that all grandfather paradoxes are ultimately meta-bootstrap paradoxes.
Assume that if time travel is possible, then changing the course of events must be also be possible just as directing future events by our decisions in the present is. If one goes back in time and kills their own grandfather, they have altered the future such that they are never born in order to time travel in the first place, a grandfather paradox. However, since time travel must have existed in order for this situation to occur, then undoubtedly someone else at some future date within this timeline will seek to change history as well. To keep this scenario simple, imagine that this person travels back in order to kill you before you are able to kill your own grandfather, thus restoring your original timeline in which you travel back to kill your own grandfather. This is a meta-stable time loop employing a meta-bootstrap paradox. Each timeline exists and is dependant on time travel from the other. Arbitrarily complex structures are possible involving arbitrarily many timelines, which in an infinite meta-time universe suggests the possibility that all time travel must resolve in this way.
I came up with this years ago, but have only ever seen something like it explored once: in the TV show 'Dark'.
My other Four:
o Firefly - no brainer. Brilliant. o Battlestar Galactica - Has some issues mid-late course, but still pretty end-end enthralling. o Dark (I keep re-watching this over and over every few months. I have many notebook pages full of analysis. Seriously good SciFi for the most part.) o Altered Carbon (mostly Season 1 - but Season 2 was okay)
Big Recommendation:
Not really science fiction (even bigger themes explored) but far superior in terms of overall quality of work/screen writing, and has a similar "concept" that a lot of supposed science fiction shows have - "The Leftovers" - Which I put on my list of the 5 most brilliant things on Television (Sopranos/The Wire/Deadwood/Breaking Bad being the other 4).
I'll give a honorable mention to stuff I loved but I can't totally recommends:
o Travelers - I'm a sucker for a good Time Travel Show. o Foundation - Pretty - I watch it, but I totally would never recommend it. o Fringe - Wow - was totally into this. Definitely an acquired taste though. o Raised By Wolves - Interested in where it's going. Could entirely suck eventually I guess. o Black Mirror - Hit and miss, though hits often enough that I keep coming back to it. o WestWorld - I mean, we all watched it. Season 1 was *awesome* if you watched it in realtime and didn't read all the internet commentary when the aha moment hit you. Season 2 was pretty good as well IMHO. Season 3 was just dreck where the screen writing tanked *but* it paid an *awesome* homage to the very last of the Foundation Novels to bring it all home.
I've always found Duolingo too boring and it didn't help me at all.
I was able to learn 7 languages using different routes. I already knew Russian, I've learned English the usual school + moving to the country route, and I've learned Spanish, French, German, Italian and Latin by mostly reading books and watching online videos and movies.
Having bookstores nearby (especially the Strand) with a lot of interesting books in Spanish, French, German and Italian were key for me. I completely switch 100% of all book reading to the language I'm learning.
I would not be able to learn anything without a steady supply of interesting books.
For Spanish, most movies on netflix and disney will have subtitles and dubs.
For French, there's Arte Karambolage and the newer Disney films are available in french.
For German, there's also Arte Karambolage and newer Disney films and 'Dark' on netflix.
For Italian, there's a great youtube channel by Iliana Zodiaco with interesting book discussions and reviews. Again newer Disney plus films have Italian. And italian is just very easy in itself.
Latin is a lot tougher because there's not as many books in it, and they tend to be not as easy. I've only read Caesar's Gallic wars and Winnie the Pooh. And the grammar is hard. I recommend checking out Lingua Latina Per Se, and youtube channels on Latin Grammar (there's one really good one, 'latintutorial'). Still, this is by far my weakest language. I've started Cicero orations against Catiline, but it's tough going!
I didn't learn to speak in any of these because I don't have daily contact with native speakers, but once I do, it will be fairly easy.
> the writer has mainly watched American movies that are easily accessible.
I highly recommend Scandinavian crime drama's they are under rated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-OOpZitfd0
the work of Jurgen Haabermaster is also outstanding for all those who want to break out of the bland diet Hollywood serves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAlxNNvfvJs
on a serious note I found some fantastic serials that are not so well known and which I will remember for a long time (e.g. Indian "Sacred Games", Italian "Gomorrha" or "Suburra", British "Small Axe", USA "Snowfall", German "Dogs of Berlin" or "Dark", French "The Bureau"). In fact there wasn't a single show in the last 2 years where I felt I ended up wasting my time or were forced to bail out after S01E02 because it didn't resonate. The alternative to great serials is only a good book and from my pov a movie can never give the same depth as a good serial.
Fair warning about Dark: I personally found the first season to be... well, not as good as the next two. It is very slow paced and does that modern TV show thing where basically nothing seems to happen in any given episode.
If you enjoy time travel movies, Dark on Netflix is an incredible series. Easier to follow then Primer, but I still needed diagrams once the second season really got going
One thing that Netflix is absolutely terrible at is dubbing. As a German, I grew up with the luxury of all movies shown on TV (Hollywood or European) being dubbed (this is not true for many of our neighboring countries). In Germany this means that there are actually really good voice over artists that dub so well (sync with the actor's lips so well) you can barely tell the audio is not original. And certain great voice over artists being as recognizable as great actors across movies, and sometimes even commonly used for specific actors.
But Netflix's dubs are absolutely TERRIBLE. The voice is out of sync with the lip movement, there is barely any emotion in the tone like in the original audio, the translations are sloppy and don't work for the dialog.
I also grew up with the luxury of having learnt English well enough from young age to a proficiency that I can watch movies in English just as well as in my mother's tongue. This is definitely not true for my family members or even some friends. So when I have a movie on Netflix that is English I chose to watch it in original audio, when it is German (like Dark) I can watch it in original audio, but any other show they produced in Europe I usually give it a try and have to stop watching it because the terrible dub just ruins the experience.
I know there are a lot of people that are fine with subs, but Germans are used to enjoying their movies dubbed. And similarly I heard some American friends who really wanted to watch Dark but were just turned off by the terrible English dub.
So, as far as I can tell, they're very far from creating "common European culture".
I understand that Netflix and the corresponding enforcement laws may be a great thing for movie and series makers because they finance local productions. That's good for the local film and TV business but unfortunately they are mostly just copying US productions and "culture."
As a German living in Portugal, I'm in a special situation in that respect and find Netflix offerings lacking a lot anyway. As you'd expect from an American company, they seem to be under the impression that Portugal is part of Spain and constantly advertise Spanish TV series. I don't like them. For some reason there are also Turkish TV series on Netflix, which are pretty much unwatchable crap. German series are also not very good, except for "Dark" which had an interesting aesthetics.
Another thing is that while Netflix series are sometimes okay in quality, "Netflix movies" tend to be absolutely horrible. Some of them seemed to be based on the idea of taking Hollywood movie scripts and putting them through a blender. I've never seen more plot stereotypes than in Netflix movies and stopped watching them entirely. They are essentially just really bad copies of bad Hollywood movies.
I'd rather see old BBC series, rare Hollywood movies and French movies from the 60s and 70s, but in that respect the offerings in Portugal are extremely limited. Netflix seems to optimize for minimizing costs as much as they can while still just about keeping existing subscribers.
In any case, I'd say that the influence of foreign series on the US audience is higher on Netflix than vice versa, because people in the US barely watched foreign series with subtitles before. In Europe, people were used to it already before Netflix.
I agree; you can really see the writing quality diminish when shows just go on forever. The original 'vision' is completely lost and you can almost hear the discussions between writers as they have to come up with new plot twists to make the story believable for yet another series/season.
That's why I thoroughly enjoyed the German show Dark. They planned 3 series/seasons and that's what we got: a well-thought-out show from start to finish with a single vision of how the whole thing will end. That clue in the first episode? Yep, directly related to the ending in season/series 3 and not some, now inconsequential, detail the writers 'forgot about' or changed course over.
I watched Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise), The Expanse, Orville, Continuum, Altered Carbon S1, Farscape, Firefly, Travelers, Dark, and even Stargate Universe.
What do you recommend watching next?
Hey guys,
I just finished watching Dark and out of curiosity, I wanted to see how the family members are linked to each other since its not the typical family tree. I used a network graph visualization for this and each node is clickable and opens up the character detail from the wiki. [Warning] If you haven't seen season 3 then I would advise not to click on the link as it contains spoilers
Beg to differ. Netflix has made some great local content, narcos, Dark, Casa de papel, The dutch civil war resistance miniseries, some great French comedies, and the list goes on.
I think it's great to see stuff not all coming out of Hollywood.
Native German speaker here. Other recommendations (I learned English this way):
- Watch movies / TV series with (German) subtitles. Recommendations: Dubbed stuff that is easy to digest like e.g. Crime Stuff / Big Bang Theory.
- Or more advanced, German productions: Dark on Netflix; Babylon Berlin; Bad Banks; Stromberg (The Office clone); Tatortreiniger; Tatort.
- Read books like that you might know in your native language: the Little Prince, Harry Potter.
The scene is set in '53, and it's more like "poor child, you've had a bad day. Let's have something to cheer you up ... Toast Hawaii!"
And we're pulling faces at the TV.
https://metawitches.com/2019/06/30/dark-season-2-episode-2-dark-matter-recap/
Are you saying Netflix hasn’t made quality shows that will last through 2039? I’d like to know which company you think has made close to the amount of quality shows Netflix has since 2014. Here’s part of a list I have for a content project. No company comes close to this output in recent history.
House of Cards launched February 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Orange is the New Black launched July 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Stranger Things launched July 2016 (3 seasons, 1-2 more)
—
Dark (2 seasons, 3rd is last)
Glitch (2 seasons, 3rd might never come)
Russian Doll (1 season)
Haunting of Hill House (1 season, anthology)
American Vandal (2 seasons)
Black Mirror (anthology, last season not that good)
The Crown (3 seasons)
When They See Us (mini-series, 2019)
Unbelievable (just came out)
—
Glow (3 seasons)
Kimmy Schmidt (4 seasons, finished)
Arrested Development (they tried, hard to get it all back together after years of being done)
Sex Education (1 season)
Bojack Horseman (5 seasons?) #animated
Mindhunter (2 seasons)
The OA (2 seasons)
Maniac (mini-series)
Wet Hot American Summer (2 seasons, but season 1 is the top notch one)
F is for Family (3? seasons) #animated
Big Mouth (2? seasons) #animated
—
Documentary mini-series
—
Staircase
Making a Murderer
Evil Genius
The Jinx
Wild Wild West
——-
There’s more I’m missing and I didn’t include a number of shows Netflix helps finance but isn’t the main financier or producer or original place of distribution. Shows like Glitch.
> I speak German and trying to keep up with the language in America is nearly impossible because I can't find any good source of German language
I find that hard to believe. Nowadays it is so easy to get a lot of stuff online.
> books
For older stuff there is the English Gutenberg or the German Gutenberg site and Wikisource also has some stuff.
And almost all books released in German are available as DRM free ePubs. Sign up to e.g. https://www.ebook.de/ with an email and minimal fake address (they require one even if you don't buy physical books) and pay with paypal.
> or TV shows or movies here in the US.
The public stations put a lot of stuff online. Google for "Mediathek" and the channel name (ARD, ZDF, 3Sat, ARTE, ORF, SRF). Most stuff shouldn't be geolocked and if it is, youtube-dl works also on those Mediatheken, too and if it is really geolocked, try the option '--geo-bypass-country de'. If that doesn't work, get a VPN like NordVPN.
Youtube also has lots of stuff. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funk_(Medienangebot) is a network of publicly funded producers, but it is entirely online, geared towards younger viewers but has lots of informative channels. Two of my favorites are mailab (short clips, topic always something scientific) or kurzgesagt (similar style as xkcd but with colored animations [they are Munich based, started out in English but added German content since being payed for it]). And the best thing is that all those shows are subtitled.
Depending on your age and if you are watching Let's Plays, people like Gronkh and the Rocketbeans might suit you. Or look for German channels on Twitch.
And as others already said, podcasts are big in Germany. Or online radio stations.
Also Netflix now. Of course "Dark" but especially"How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)" is a great one.
> And beyond trying to legally purchase them, it's difficult to even pirate German language media. It just doesn't exist.
It does. You're just looking in the wrong places. :-)
Mldonkey is surprisingly often still used for that. Also some plain old download sites (granted, that are not that easy to find if you're not a regular on German sites).
Anybody can hit me up if they want some pointers (mail from profile, dingir_bhaak on Twitter, or bhaak on Freenode IRC).
Maybe, look for "Butterfly effects[1]" happening around you, i.e., small insignificant events that have huge, enormous after-effects.
Essentially, if there were a system that could send information from the future to the past, the future agent would want to be "as discreet as" possible, while still achieving "nearly perfect" outcome. Note that the future agent has the advantage of reiterating over and over his/her choices, because, well, the "future-future" he/she can still send a signal to his/her past about want went wrong the previous time.
This happens to be a common plot for a lot of various time-travel movies and TV shows like Dark, Umbrella Academy, etc.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
The article viewpoints are probably right, Netflix and Amazon need a few more hits that people trust.
The Office was a big fallback show and Netflix needs a few of those of their own. Stranger Things probably fits that.
The Witcher might change things for quality on Netflix.
Netflix shows have high production quality in terms of cinematography, lighting, sound, color, sets, on location etc. Writing and big draw actors aren't there just yet, though they have a bunch of that going and started that way with House of Cards. Stranger Things was new actors except a couple like Winona Ryder, the writing was better and it was successful. Maniac and Sabrina are also pretty good in this area. Bojack Horseman has a cult following. Dark is amazing. Black Mirror was a great acquisition. I Am Mother was pretty good and premiering Annihilation was a steal. Russian Doll was excellent. Animation like Death, Love & Robots, Voltron, Castlevania and more are solid. Those are all the model to go for. What is missing in most shows is writing and casting/actors draw to make a staple series that becomes a fallback like the article mentions.
> Consumers turn to a trusted source when they don’t know what to watch on their streaming service
> Subscriptions like Netflix and Amazon Prime offer plenty of critically-acclaimed, award-winning content. But the thing is, viewers have to pick which movies and series they’ll watch, and observers say many are getting burned out from all that decision-making.
Now with The Witcher the writing is based on a really solid book series, they have a big name actor Henry Cavill that has read the series and it looks great. It could be their Game of Thrones.
Amazon is also trying this with Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time.
These shows if they are done right, will get rewatched for a long time and draws in the mega fans that are influencers.
Netflix is doing pretty good with stand up comedy, maybe even the leader now. They paid Dave Chappelle and will forever be thanked for that by comedy content consumers.
Netflix and Amazon need some big hits like the coming epics, and they need some good staple shows like the Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99 (Netflix should have bought this), Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Friends, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more. When they have that they equal the content competition that has that trusted good quality. They need a few more of these always watchable fallbacks.
They are both still chasing HBO, HBO is still the top in consistently good content and shows.
Personally I love the competition, some real funding and creator freedom is being unleashed, some are big hits, some are average and some not so good, but I like the amount of content and like the vibe of where Netflix is headed. Their new intro splash where the N goes into color bands is even great, matches their really colorful catalog.
Wild. I think some of the best tv of the past couple of years is on Netflix. Dark, Haunting of Hill House, Glitch, American Vandal, Sex Education, just off the top of my head as top shows in recent history. Solid shows like Now You See Me just having come out. Solid movies like Always Be My Maybe just come out. Then guilty pleasure shows that are good too like Sabrina. And shows on networks that likely aren’t going to pull content for their own service like BBC shows with top notch content like The Fall are on Netflix too.
If I was stuck with one companies original new content. I don’t see how I wouldn’t pick Netflix for now.
Does this at all depend on the type of show? I find when watching programming with a lot of ambiguity (mysteries, procedurals, etc) my brain is very active trying to anticipate or think back to connect dots to follow what's happening. Compare that to spectacle programming like sports/drama/reality shows where everything is happening onscreen.
I wonder also about foreign shows where you are forced to read while the action is in progress.
And then combine that: I can watch reality shows with my wife and feel no real change in energy, but then we watch something like "Dark" (subtitled and very mystery-box format) and I feel exhausted by the end of the episode.
Mad Men didn't even have an audience when it aired (<2 million viewers most episodes), and airs on a network that likely won't exist in 5-6 years (or at least won't be producing new content), so it's not super clear to me what your point is about those shows as evidence of how a network grows. The way a network grows is by producing content people want to watch, whether that's disposable content made to last a minute or content made to last the test of time. HBO isn't growing because people are subscribing to watch Sopranos re-runs.
Past reporting suggests churn in most subscription content services is very low, so your Netflix cancellation may be unusual. I'd also add that exclusive content is one part of the story, but there's also a lot of licensed content that's very good on Netflix as on other services.
But for what it is worth, I would rank the following Netflix originals to be "top tier" within their genre -- some of these genres lend themselves more to rewatching than others, and some are closer to my taste than others, some held up in quality through their run more than others, so in a sense I am ranking shows based on their peak quality --
Orange is the New Black; Bloodline; Stranger Things; The Crown; Gilmore Girls AYITL; The OA; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Mindhunter; The Haunting of Hill House; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Master of None; Love; Lady Dynamite; Santa Clarita Diet; GLOW; American Vandal; Maniac; Bojack Horseman; F is for Family; Disenchantment; Hilda; Dark; The Rain; Elite; Chef's Table; Making a Murderer; Shot in the Dark; Wormwood; Wild Wild Country; Salt Fat Acid Heat; Queer Eye; The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell; My Next Guest Needs No Introduction; Lilyhammer; Terrace House; Alias Grace; The End of the Fucking World; Collateral; Wanderlust; Longmire; Black Mirror; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
In addition to these, the following shows are Netflix originals in my region, indicating that although someone else initially funded them, Netflix bought them for exclusive distribution here, and also meet the above requirements:
Babylon Berlin; Bodyguard; Casé; Crashing; Cuckoo; Derry Girls; The Great British Baking Show; Happy!; Happy Valley; The Investigator; Peaky Blinders; River.
I have pretty broad taste in TV and watch a lot of TV while I am programming or running data analysis, so maybe the breadth of stuff I include here is surprising to most. But to the extent your post is a useful anecdote about how Netflix has no great shows, I'm responding to your challenge to "Name one show" that would meet that criteria.
(These are TV shows only, not films. I haven't really liked many Netflix original films although there are a few I would say are great, like Okja and Roma)
Movies might be harder, but I really liked "Dark" which is a Netflix made German show [0].
[0]: https://www.thelocal.de/20171122/netflix-premiers-first-ever-original-german-series
Its not as if Netflix is the creme de la creme of cinema. Netflix already sucks outside the US. Outside the US, there's far less content, and there is either way a lot of filler content anyway.
What is going to happen is that Netflix will get the rights to stream (hopefully quality) local movies and series. That's gonna differ per country in EU. For example, some movies get broadcasted once or twice on public TV and that's it. Youth however mainly or even only stream. So they can get to see the movies they paid for (via tax) but via Netflix now, and Netflix can acquire them [reasonably] cheap. Everyone wins.
Right now, there's a bunch of quality EU series on Netflix already such as Casa De Papel and Dark.
I have to concur with this 100%, most true crime shows from Netflix have felt padded, something where I feel like if the podcast Criminal can make an enthralling episode about an event, the TV versions should be adding a lot more for the 10 hour version. In fact, the only "true crime" series I can think of actually completing is American Vandal, which was not only engaging but laugh out loud hilarious as it mocked itself. I'm truly curious to see if they can capture it in a season 2 without it being a repeat of the same. Of course, there could be some personal taste and behavioral patterns that endear the audible versions of that format more compelling (I usually listen to podcasts during times when I'm not able to be distracted with a phone, articles and texts, such as when I'm driving, yard work, or walking the dog). It could just be that the format for TV relies far more on imagery and visual cues when produced for the screen. I do know that I really haven't seen a real true crime TV series keep me engaged beyond an episode or three, which probably just means I fall out of a different "taste cluster", but there are just some shows that can use visual imagery to enhance a non-fictional topic (Vox's Explained comes to mind here). Unless there is a lot of in-depth information, and a way to make it salient to the story, it's hard for me to value the time commitment.
Likewise, even fictional shows with short seasons can feel tedious at times, which for me, many happen to be British shows, though not all (I enjoyed Safe, but got really bored during Collateral and The Fall, both of which I've heard great things, but much of the storylines just ended up feeling as if scenes were there to "enhance the tension", but served some other purpose). Again maybe super personal and cultural, but I do love long format television, just please give me a reason to keep caring about the outcome without having to wind down some plot rabbit hole).
I might just be impatient and a typical American who is affixed with getting "a hook" somewhere in the first 3 episodes, or I'm probably going to give something else a try. And there are quite a few really good foreign series that I enjoyed, (such as The Rain and 3%) and then some domestic and international shows that put me in the same taste cluster as shows like Dark, The OA and Sense8 that really just never connect. I'm not sure if that's a padding issue per se, but I guess anything that you're not really getting into just feels tedious after a while.
There is a German sci-fi series on Netflix called "Dark" [1] that I would also grab the chance to recommend while it is online. I figured that it would have to be above average for Netflix to broadcast it internationally and it turned out to be quite superb (even if it is perhaps only tangentially science fiction).
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5753856/