Exploring "1899"

Minor spoilers ahead.

I only know about Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese's series "Dark" by reputation.  It's on my ever-expanding "to watch" list, but frankly the multi-generational, time-hopping premise is a little intimidating.  Their latest series, "1899," is more approachable.  It's a mystery show, about a steam ship in 1899, the Kerberos, which is carrying a diverse group of passengers from the UK to America.  Strange phenomena occur onboard, after they encounter a ghost ship, the Prometheus.

I've seen a lot of mystery box shows, and "1899" is one of the most ambitious.  There are well over a dozen major characters to keep track of, all speaking different languages, and frequently having trouble communicating with one another.  Most of the action revolves around a female doctor, Maura (Emily Beecham), who is onboard the Kerberos due to cryptic instructions from her missing brother.  There are many other passengers, whose pasts and identities are uncovered over the course of the season -  a family of Danish immigrants including the pregnant Tove (Clara Rosager), the haunted ship's captain, Eyk Larsen (Andreas Pietschmann), a stowaway, Jerome (Yann Gael), a newly married French couple, Lucien (Jonas Bloquet) and Clemence (Mathilde Ollivier), a Chinese woman, Ling Yi (Isabella Wei), in disguise as a Japanese geisha, a Polish stoker, Olek (Maciej Musial), and a Spaniard, Angel (Miguel Bernardeu) who is awfully intimate with the Portuguese priest, Ramiro (Jose Pimentao) that he's traveling with.  Expect a lot of subtitles.  

Then there are the two characters who aren't introduced with names - a solemn, silent boy (Fflyn Edwards) who is the only apparent survivor of the Prometheus, and a man in black (Aneurin Barnard), who climbs aboard the Kerberos at the end of the first episode, seemingly out of nowhere.  I immediately assumed that they were the same person from two different time periods (spoilers: they're not), because this is exactly the kind of show where we expect such metaphysical twistiness to take place.  Impossible and illogical things are constantly happening.  Comparisons to "Lost" are inevitable, since we're often not given direct explanations for why specific events occur.  However, the narrative never dwells on these elements for long, constantly juggling multiple storylines, characters, and POVs.  And how things are happening is never as important as why those things are happening.  

The show stands out because the premise is executed so well.  There's a simple and straightforward explanation for all the madness that you can probably guess long before the big reveal.  However, "1899" has excellent storytelling sensibilities, spending much more time setting up the characters and systematically working through all of their personal baggage, while the larger mystery is playing out.  Also, "1899" is never just about solving the mystery, but establishing the Kerberos as this microcosm of a society, with strictly delineated classes and rules, and then throwing the whole system into chaos.  The show starts fairly slowly, but the calamities and disasters are soon coming fast and furious after a few episodes, and the writers are good about featuring different characters.  If you don't care for Maura, you still might like to follow Tove or Clemence or Olek or the Captain through the story.    

I don't care much for the look of "1899," which is dark and gloomy and bleak.  For a show that relies so heavily on visuals, and with so much care put into the design elements - sinister triangles abound -  it's awfully insistent on staying as dreary as possible throughout.  It often reminds me of a horror themed video game, with its dim lighting and preoccupation with small tokens - keys, a medal, letters.  However, the show's creators are very adept at using the visuals in interesting ways, often ending episodes with inexplicable imagery. The first episode ends with the discovery of the boy, clutching an ominous black pyramid.  Strange tunnels keep appearing and disappearing, somehow leading to unnerving places from the characters' pasts.  Aurally, however, we run into some cultural missteps.  There's a preoccupation with anachronistic American pop music I thought was a bit much.

It took a while for "1899" to win me over, and will require some patience from genre fans.  It's far more of a historical drama initially than an action/adventure series or a thriller.  However, the extra time spent with the characters pays off nicely.  This was supposed to be a three season story, and we're left with an infuriating cliffhanger since the show was cancelled. However, enough answers are offered that I still found the trip worthwhile.    

---