Dark Matter: 2024's best show so far

Why the Blake Crouch series is so good, plus a few other TV recommendations I've been watching and enjoying this year

Sci-fi series Dark Matter ended its brilliant first season over on Apple TV+ last week, with an episode that hewed surprisingly close to the end of Blake Crouch’s book - albeit less chaotic than I pictured when I read it back in 2019 - while prioritising the emotional impact of the ending on those involved.

[Spoilers from the whole season, including the end, follow.]

It also occurred to me that it moved the show into the fantasy realm. I kind of wish I could walk into a black box and choose to emerge in a better universe.

But, then, isn’t that one of the best things about Dark Matter?

Throughout the series, after being replaced by Jason2 (Joel Edgerton), our main man Jason Dessen (also Joel Edgerton) traversed the Multiverse, for a large portion of the series with Jason2’s abandoned girlfriend Amanda (Alice Braga).

For a string of episodes, we see Jason and Amanda emerge into universes that simply aren’t hospitable. In one, Chicago is a ruin in a desert, on the shore of a dried up Lake Michigan. In another, the sun is expanding and has burnt off the atmosphere. In another, the world is engulfed in a new ice age. In another, a mystery disease has killed off most of the population. In another, giant man-eating insect-bats are swarming the planet and eating everything and everyone.

Its like they’re making their way up Dante’s 9 Circles Of Hell.

Time and again, they get painfully close to Jason’s home universe only to find some small difference. Its not until Episode 7 that, deciding they need a rest, Amanda directs them to a technological utopia. Over dinner, Amanda announces she is staying put, asking Jason to stay. But he can’t.

A few more missteps follow then Jason finds his way to his own utopia, the wife and son that he was cruelly separated from. But we’ve already established that each decision creates a branching universe; dozens of other versions of this Jason have also made it home to be reunited with the wife and son they were so cruelly separated from. By the end of the series, the only solution is for the original Jason to take Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and his son Charlie (Oakes Fegley) into the box and let them decide where they head next.

I’m outlining all of this to make one point:
We should be applauding the restraint of Dark Matter.

There are so many ways this concept could have been messed up from the start. In lesser hands, the show would have been used as a messaging system for everything wrong with our world. Jason and Amanda would have gone into a nightmare universe in which Trump won a second term, or a nightmare universe where Palestine is wiped off the map, or a nightmare universe where global warming has run amok, or a nightmare universe where Russia and North Korea make a show of their friendship and provide each other weapons.

And it would have seemed preachy in a way that would have diminished the emotional effect of the series. I know this because Apple TV+ had a global warming focused sci-fi series last year called Extrapolations that was preachy in a way that diminished the emotional effect of the series.

Blake Crouch, having written the book on which the series was based then filling the show-runner role on the series itself, was more aware than anyone what this story hinged on. It was the emotion, the relatability of the concept, which allowed the viewer to put themselves in Jason’s shoes.

It was Jason barely holding himself together when he finally sees his Daniela again. It was the hesitance with which Daniela queried his multiverse travels. It was the scepticism on Charlie’s face about their final plan, and Daniela quietly grabbing Jason’s hand - seeking or providing reassurance, we don’t know. It was the fifty or so Jason’s who cared more about Daniela and Charlie than about being right and waited at the box to say goodbye.

This was what made Dark Matter a triumph - the restraint, how much it held back, the way it hovered on character moments while avoiding sci-fi cliches.

My favourite show of 2024 so far. And it’s not even close.

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What else have I been enjoying on TV this year?

American true crime has made a bit of a comeback this year. Netflix has had a couple of twisty and well made series in American Nightmare (kind of the real life Gone Girl) and American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders (which features a scene in which a woman claims to have seen the real Zapruder film and it is very different). Meanwhile, unexpectedly good sequel The Jinx: Part Two (Neon, Sky TV) follows Robert Durst - no relation to Fred - after the shocking admission, or confession, at the end of what-turned-out-to-be The Jinx: Part One.

Netflix’s adaptation of Cixin Liu’s 3 Body Problem was a little uneven and a little rushed, but thoroughly entertaining and, for the most part, more coherent than the book on which it was based. I think the same goes for Prime Video’s Fallout, which packed a lot into its first season. I also thoroughly enjoyed the first season of Netflix’s The Gentlemen, based on the Guy Ritchie movie.

Superheroes abound once again. The second season of Emma Moran’s Extraordinary was hilarious and poignant. Marvel’s animated X-Men ‘97 turned out to be a brilliant return to the cult favourite 90s cartoon series; the third episode was one of the best single episodes of anything this year. And we’re only four or five episodes in, but the fourth season of Prime Video’s The Boys is once again one of the best things available to watch at present.

For sheer entertainment value, the sixth season of Dropout’s flagship game show Game Changer probably takes the cake for me - its string of episodes “Bingo”, “Deja Vu” and “Beat The Buzzer” are as hilarious as any comedy series you’ll see this year, and more clever than any game show. It’s spin-off Make Some Noise just launched its third season, and that has started off great too.

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Cheers for reading everyone!
Hope you all have a great week ahead!
Chris