TV Review: 1899 is intriguing and frightening — it’s worth going along for the ride
1899: now streaming on Netflix
My wife is helping with this review.
It’s not that I couldn’t be bothered watching (Netflix). But it’s a moody brain-tickler of a horror show and my wife is the local expert on that genre. She particularly liked , the German time-travel series and this is made by the same people.
It also stars some of the same people, which she said is a bit confusing. Or maybe it’s supposed to be that way, because some are speculating 1899 will collide with the story in at some point in the future. Or the past.
The story starts with a passenger boat steaming across the Atlantic in 1899. Up in first class, there is an English woman with signs of bondage on her wrist, an unhappy French couple on honeymoon, a grumpy Japanese teenager in Geisha gear, and a Spanish priest who probably isn’t a priest. The good news is Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t dancing a jig below deck in third class. But there are some Danish religious people who have something to hide. And the captain looks very like Richard Chamberlain in , for people who can remember the 1980s. That’s genuinely disconcerting.
We’re also told that a sister ship, the Prometheus, has been missing for four months. Then they start to get a signal that is probably from the missing ship. I’d definitely have ignored it and kept going to New York but Captain Richard Chamberlain decides to alter course — and seven hours later, in the middle of the deep dark night, they arrive at the Prometheus, which has no sign of life. It does however seem to have trees growing on board, which is unexpected in the north Atlantic. I’m not a huge fan of spooky horrors, but this is really good stuff. Not least because somebody seems to have swum over from the Prometheus unseen and now he’s roaming the decks of the original ship. It’s intriguing and frightening; my wife is all in and so am I.
It helps that the actors are all believable, each of them playing someone who appears to be on the run from something in their past. You get the feeling they are all connected in some way not yet revealed; you are also allowed to feel that this might not actually be a steamer crossing the north Atlantic at the end of the 19th century. (The English woman with marks on her wrists is shown reminding herself that this is supposed to be 1899 in a blink-and-you-miss it moment, a nice little bread-crumb suggesting things ain't what they seem.)
I’ve noticed a thing recently where new shows on streaming platforms lose a lot of focus between episode one and two. is no exception — the tautness goes out of the story in the second episode and it threads water a bit without moving the story forward. So yes, they could do with quickening it up a bit. But is going places and it’s worth going along for the ride. My wife says you should give it a watch.
