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Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:04 pm
It's the German sci-fi/horror drama on Netflix and despite the publicity, it's nothing like Stranger Things. I liked it quite a bit but then I'm a sucker for time travel stories and atmospheric genre shows. If anything it's more like Back to the Future as re-imagined by David Fincher but the show it reminded me most of was the French supernatural drama Les Revenants/The Returned. Both shows are about families in sinister small towns, torn apart by events beyond their comprehension.
The series is about four families in a German small town across three generations. Some of the characters have become aware of a time portal in a cave near a nuclear power station which opens every 33 years, creating all sorts of time travel paradoxes when some of the characters start to travel back and forth in time. Some stumble into it by mistake, others are lured there with dire consequences and some are using it to their advantage. The series starts in 2019 with a suicide and the disappearance of a young boy and eventually adds plot lines from 1986 and 1953, which are the years the portal leads to.
The characters are played by different actors at different stages of their lives and they are mostly very well cast, though at times it does get tough keeping up with who is who across the decades. Some of the older cast members were stars of the German New Wave like Angela Winkler (Katharina Blum, The Tin Drum) whose distinctive facial mole makes her the easiest to keep track off over generations. Lisa Kreuzer starred in several of the early Wim Wenders films.
When it comes to genres like horror and sci-fi and German film and TV hasn't produced much of note since the 1920s but this can compare itself with the better recent genre shows out there. It looks great and has one of the best scores for a TV show I can remember. Ends on a great cliff hanger too, which has me intrigued about season 2.
The series is about four families in a German small town across three generations. Some of the characters have become aware of a time portal in a cave near a nuclear power station which opens every 33 years, creating all sorts of time travel paradoxes when some of the characters start to travel back and forth in time. Some stumble into it by mistake, others are lured there with dire consequences and some are using it to their advantage. The series starts in 2019 with a suicide and the disappearance of a young boy
Spoiler
(I especially loved how these two events end up connecting)
The characters are played by different actors at different stages of their lives and they are mostly very well cast, though at times it does get tough keeping up with who is who across the decades. Some of the older cast members were stars of the German New Wave like Angela Winkler (Katharina Blum, The Tin Drum) whose distinctive facial mole makes her the easiest to keep track off over generations. Lisa Kreuzer starred in several of the early Wim Wenders films.
When it comes to genres like horror and sci-fi and German film and TV hasn't produced much of note since the 1920s but this can compare itself with the better recent genre shows out there. It looks great and has one of the best scores for a TV show I can remember. Ends on a great cliff hanger too, which has me intrigued about season 2.