The economy made me cut my Netflix subscription a few months ago, but my articles about Rings of Power made me remember some of the cool series I watched on Netflix when I had the service. A lot of times I browsed through the “international releases” because I like to watch stuff produced by other cultures, and Dead Places has this very interesting take on the supernatural.
The premise is fairly simple, the main character, Will, is a paranormal investigator that gets involved in solving the mystery of his sister’s disappearance (she disappeared when they both were kids) The series is fairly short, only 8 episodes of 45+ minutes each, so it might feel somewhat short. However, since it revolves around a main premise, I think a longer run would have made the series like it was stretching for no reason (like adding extra side-quests, repetitive missions and a lot of walking to a videogame just to make it last longer), because there’s only so many “filler episodes” you can add before it starts losing direction.
While trying to solve the mystery of his sister’s disappearance, he solves other paranormal cases, related to every specific episode. While these paranormal cases are your “tried and true” ghost stories (murders, possessions, harassing spirits, interdimensional beings, etc.) many of those are based on African folklore, which is really cool because that single change makes the dynamic and execution work differently.
At least for me, this is one of the main elements that attract me to the series. In media, you’re used to medieval castles, New York-style cities, stories with pirates, sailors, etc., so being taken on a journey to explore African mythology, even if just slightly, is a really cool switch.
Another thing that was a real impact was the ending. I will not spoil anything, but I have to say when you finally see the resolution of the sister’s disappearance, things get into really dark territory and that was another thing I really appreciated.
As I said above, I watched this on Netflix a while ago, and I can’t say if it’s still available, nor can I say if people in the US can watch it on Netflix, since different shows have different distribution agreements. However, you can watch it on Amazon Prime. If you like paranormal series, you should definitely watch this one.
