The characters in Dark are much more interesting and well developed. The characters in 1899 are basically all 2D caricatures and the setting is completely artificial so not very interesting. In Dark, the characters are much easier to relate to because they are more human. In season 1 in particular they are basically all normal people and when their lives are disrupted by the events of the time loop they react the way that real people would react.
In Dark season 3, which I still really enjoyed, the show became overly burdened with the plot elements and stopped being as much about the characters, so it was a bit flatter. 1899 season 1 starts right off the bat with flat characters going through the motions needed by the plot. It’s a fine show, nice sets, interesting costumes, but it’s not nearly as compelling as the natural tragedy of Dark.
Pantheon was offerred a 2 season offer prior to airing the first season, but season two has been yanked by AMC, effectively ending the series prematurely with no resolution.
This is the sort of boom/bust cycle that changes an industry for the foreseeable future.
It happened in publishing, too. There were a few great series and ongoing sagas that finally reached an endpoint. A few were amazing–and so a ton of new authors were published, each one a new ticket to the lottery–but just enough series endings were despised (eg Twilight) that readers refused to invest in a new series again until it was finished and they knew whether it was worth it.
Publishers began cancelling ongoing series and refusing to contract for anything new that didn’t first prove itself as a standalone with the potential for a sequel or series.
Think we’re gonna see a lot more of this unfortunately.
Seems like Netflix is like 90% mid-quality documentary series at this point. Fortunately, I generally enjoy that genre. Watched the Madoff one, was pretty good. I knew that somebody had tried to tip off the SEC, but I wasn’t aware the guy was sending them letters with titles like “BERNIE MADOFF IS RUNNING A PONZI SCHEME YOU IDIOTS” with bullet points of all the very clear evidence he had.
Yah, I think I posted it in the Movies thread by accident, but if a good series comes out on Netflix, it’s far more likely it’s Korean than English. They’ve had some solid Korean content, but very little in English. Doesn’t seem like much in Spanish/French/Portuguese either and for a while there was a decent flow of series in those too.
Early in s1 means you have nothing but a long era of WTF!!! cliffhangers and mysteries for the foreseeable future. Some peaks and valleys of course by the end but what a show.
I started watching Three Pines, a mystery show set in Quebec starring Alfred Molina as the lead detective. So far it seems like middling genre fare, but it’s really poorly lit. Has anyone else noticed this?
I also rewatched BSG recently, the mini-series and the first two seasons are really great. Hope you watched the mini-series first Melkerson, when I first watched the show in 2009 I initially missed it and jumped straight to season 1. The mini-series is terrific.
I’m two episodes in. The lighting style has to be intentional. I think the point is to make the white people blend into the white background so the native peoples stand out. At least that’s my thought, but I’m no film expert.
