Though the German Series Dark was a complicated puzzle, it ended up as rewarding experience thanks to its pulsating and creative story telling. Unfortunately the same cannot be attributed to the heavily marketed second series, it's missed the mark by a long mile. I think the so called pleasing an international audience went against the tide.
Its year 1899 and settings is a ship named "Kerberos", ferrying passengers (divided in upper and lower docks base on classes) to USA. On its way the ship get a distress signal from "Prometheus", the ship that was lost 4 months ago. The captain takes a decision to divert and seeks answers from that mysterious ship. Things turns upside down the moment they land on the ghost ship and paranoia kicks in. The characters hallucinations increases and some older memories rekindles. There seems to be a connection to existing ship and some of its passengers with the Ghost Ship. The story tries to unravels that mystery with a mix of supernaturals and sci-fic ideas.
Like dark it starts off slowly, but it wastes quite a lot of time and infact things becomes interesting only by episode 5. The conversation were one-sided and its badly written through out. The keywords are whats happening, this can't be real, its all a mistake. The series suffers from a mediocre and sluggish script with artificial dialogues. Also, there are overly forced subplots that add nothing to the mystery itself. You can draw parallels to Lost and The Matrix at many places. The story telling is very irritating at times and i find acting department a big let down. Its impossible to get attached to any characters or their back stories.
There are some interesting take aways and i loved the way it ended, but it all looked familiar. You may get a feel you have untangled the mystery, but like Dark the series can surprise you in unexpected ways and i am hoping S02 will be much better. The series ended in a nice cliff hanger with a date changed to October 19, 2099 and an interesting finding. I am not that eagerly waiting for S02 as i never felt a connect with the characters. Let it come when it has to. In the end i am sure what is lost will be found.
Verdict - 3/5(A Simulation Trap)