this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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It was a great first season but I knew it would get cancelled.
If a show takes even the slightest bit of concentration to follow, and you can't absorb the plot whilst playing with your phone, then it fails. Not many viewers are looking for a complex, intelligent story...they just want to be double distracted from their lives.
1899 suffered from this too, although in really it never really stood a chance against Netflix’s “fuck you” approach to shows.
They KNEW exactly what they were getting with 1899 due to it’s predecessor Dark. Dark was a slow burn that became immensely popular over time, and 1899 followed the same formula. But no. Netflix demands that shows be binged by half of their viewer base in the first week or it’s history.
1899 was written as a trilogy, the same as Dark. A complex story that would unravel over 3 seasons. Now 1899 sits on a shelf as one season with a fuck ton of unanswered questions. The poor writers were heartbroken (as was the fan base)
Yes I’m bitter, fuck Netflix.
Seriously, did we watch the same 1899??
From the third episode it was already making me think "oh, this is going to be one of those shows where literally everything is a mistery and nothing is ever explained".
And then, nothing gets explained, and the season ends with the cheapest "GOTYA!!" ever. Like... what?? I've spent HOURS watching this and I literally wasted all this time... hmm... of course it was cancelled. It was expensive and didn't really say anything meaningful.
"B-but because you need more seasons to understand", this is not how the business works. We can not trust you will deliver if you failed to do anything meaningful in a whole season.
As I said, that’s how Dark worked and Netflix took on 1899 knowing that. They knew it was supposed to be a trilogy, just like Dark. They knew it would be a mystery, just like Dark.
If they didn’t agree with that then they should have either a) not taken the project on, or b) made it absolutely clear to the writers that there was a high chance it would be cancelled after season 1 and to write it accordingly.
The expense part is purely on Netflix’s head. They wanted to invest in new technology and used 1899 as their reason/showcase. The writers couldn’t have cared less if it was a green screened boat or some weird 3D set.
Perhaps things would have been different if they had kept it in German (and in that branch of Netflix) rather than forcing it international, who knows. Let it perform accordingly for their local audience and then any international viewers are a bonus, god knows the majority of the English speaking world has zero interest in subtitles. Different cultures have different expectations from their programmes, and let’s face it, the American one is for the majority one of minimal effort and instant gratification.
The crucial aspect of Dark was very straightforward. Time-travel. And everything happens organically from there.
In 1899, every episode adds a new thing that is completely unrelated to the previous, nothing is consistent, and it turns out nothing is really meaningful at all in the end.
I could start the show watching season 2 and I would be as clueless as anyone.