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1899 Review

1899 is a German multilingual historical mystery science fiction series created by Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar. Its first season premiered on Netflix in 2022.

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“They show you the world,

and then they tell you you can’t have it“

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Immigrants on a steamship travelling from London to New York get caught up in a mysterious riddle after finding a second vessel adrift on the open sea. This show was made by the creators of ‘Dark’, which is an iconic SF series that is among the best television shows ever created. Thus, I’d obviously had a lot of excitement for this new series and ultimately I ended up being mostly satisfied, but slightly disappointed.

I will talk about that problematic finale later, but let me first say that I adored the first half of this season or even two thirds of it. It was a terrific, layered and fascinating mystery that gripped me from start to finish. It is a show that is languidly paced and requiring a lot of patience from the viewers, but it is so riveting in its meticulous detail and eerie atmosphere that it will be difficult to not pay full attention to it regardless.

What particularly appealed to me as a linguist is the show’s multilingual dialogue. The languages spoken in 1899 are as follows: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Mandarin and Swedish. That is ten languages in total! I have to say that I was impressed with that as I have never before seen such a truly diverse series or movie for that matter. It honors all these cultures and languages wonderfully.

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Hopefully the final twist will lead to a SF second season that will make sense of this multilingual crew, but for now the theme of lack of total understanding was evident. But the show still showcased that not everything hinges on language as characters do come to a mutual understanding or at least some sort of compassion due to body language alone. And it was just fascinating hearing all these different languages and the characters interacting with each other in a befuddled manner.

Maura pretty much functions as the protagonist of this first season. Her backstory turned out to be quite dark and complex, even convoluted in a way. A lot hinges on her mysterious brother, so hopefully the next season will deliver in that regard, but for now I really liked her character who had a lot of agency and who was so well performed by Emily Beecham. Eyk is among the more likable members of the crew as this charismatic captain and he shares a great dynamic with Maura herself.

Angel and Ramiro are a Spanish-Portuguese gay couple who don’t for now connect to the overall narrative all that much, but individually they worked and it was interesting how they were so different with the former being a truly terrible man and the latter being quite sympathetic. I also really liked Ling Yi and I found her backstory interesting and very dark. Her romance with Olek worked despite them not speaking each other’s language. Olek is this Polish worker who did not get developed all that much, but he was among the most likable characters of the bunch for sure.

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The French trio of characters also got a solid backstory, but they are far from the show’s most important and/or memorable characters. The standouts are this Danish family who are all individually quite fascinating. Krester gets to deal with his closeted homosexuality, Tove is pregnant after being raped in the season’s darkest backstory while Iben is the scariest of them all as her religious zealotry was quite creepy at times.

Let’s talk about that ending. It eventually turns out that the second ship was a failed simulation and that the current ship is also just a simulation with the actual characters being on a spaceship heading to God knows where. In another twist, it’s not Maura’s father who is the villain responsible for all of this, but Maura herself and her mysterious brother. The gist of this made sense for now, but the problem is that so many smaller issues and bits and pieces were left mostly or wholly unresolved. Whenever you have a story that is so extremely vague and unexplained, but you introduce so many mysteries, you are bound to leave watching it disappointed and that is exactly what happened to me.

But for now I cannot criticize the show all too harshly because this is the first season after all in what is supposed to be a trilogy of seasons similar to ‘Dark’. I can criticize it for not really resolving any of its mysteries in its first season unlike its more successful predecessor, but we can at least hold out hope that the next seasons will deliver. If ever a show hinged on its future seasons, this is the one.

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1899 is gorgeously shot, stupendously crafted in its production design and containing many splendid, historically accurate costumes and also technology. It is evident that the budget on it was huge as it looks and sounds impeccable with a great score and a phenomenal opening theme that sets the mood perfectly for an atmosphere full of paranoia, mystery and eeriness. The SF elements for now are great and some of that imagery was truly striking, especially the advanced tech and those tunnels leading outside of the ship. The dialogue is particularly strong, grounded in reality and sophisticated as the show deftly explored this era of most social upheaval and change.