So, after 2 years of waiting 1899 has finally hit Netflix.
This is the new series from the creators of Dark which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest TV shows ever made. I don't doubt people will disagree but for me Dark was a masterpiece.
So, the new series is, as the title suggests, set in 1899, 13 years before the Titanic disaster. The ship Kerberus is en-route to New York, it's not clear where it left from, but is a German ship owned by a British company.
4 months prior its sister ship, The Prometheus, went missing on the same route, and half way through its voyage the Kerberus picks up a message from what is thought to be The Prometheus, but it's 7 hours away in the wrong direction from its last known position....
Mystery ensues.
I started watching episode 1 and got about 15 minutes in thinking parts of this are amazing but some of the acting and dialogue is very poor - poor acting and awful exposition.
Then I realised that's because Netflix had defaulted to the English dubbed version....
This was confusing as 1899 is actually in about 5 different languages (English, French, German, Mandarin, Dutch and possibly more). So the English actors were all fantastic but then there were jarring moments of terrible dubbing.
Once I switched it to the original language version, oh my, I am loving it. All of a sudden it actually makes some sense and the acting, script and visuals have been top notch.
However, one of the things I loved about Dark was you had no real idea what genre of show it was until quite a way in, and I won't spoil that show by explaining that further.
1899 wears it's genre proudly on it's sleeve though and right off the bat it is leaning into sci-fi / supernatural horror / mystery but all in a good way. Of course, knowing the creators that could all turn on its head....
So, I am 3 episodes in, I am hooked and I do recommend it, but do make sure you don't accidentally watch the dubbed version, as I did, because it's awful, truly awful.....
Edit: So I finished this at the weekend, and it was great, right up until the last episode..... Not sure about that ending.....
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