Dark

Every once in a while, a show comes along that surprises. I'm one of those people who tries to keep up with what's getting released on Netflix, because I think that Netflix is producing some of the best shows out there.

But prior to a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't heard a word about the German sci-fi show, Dark, which recently appeared.

If you haven't seen it, please do. Time traveling, relationship-bending, and depressing could all be used to describe Dark. It's German, after all, and though you could partially mistake the first episode for a rip-off of Stranger Things, given that a small town abuts a secretive operation, it really isn't.

Suicide starts the show, and so if you're not prepared, which I wasn't, and you really don't want to watch anything "heavy," you could let that scene keep you from watching. But that is just the beginning . I won't try to explain the time-bending relationships that take place. But I will say that a mysterious man called Noah is trying to do something strange with time; activity, which he describes as a fight between good and evil.

But at no time is it apparent who is evil and who is good. We see protagonists do bad things, and we see deeply flawed antagonists whose actions become more clear over time The characters are complex, and the story moves. But watchers must be patient. At the end, we find there is more to come, that time isn't a straight line, and that it's not clear which characters are merely pawns, and which are brilliant strategists.