One Season Wonders: 1899 Built an Immaculate Puzzle

In the years before streaming, extremely niche TV shows faced uphill battles against cancellation. As a result, TV history is littered with the corpses of shows struck down before their time. In One Season Wonders, Ken Lowe revisits one of the unique, promising scripted shows struck down before they had a chance to shine. This month: Netflix’s 1899.

One Season Wonders is not just about shows that have been canceled. It is also about cancellation itself. It looked different in the era of Big Three broadcast networks than it did in the time when cable had fractured audiences. The subject matter that is too out there, too honest, or too cerebral for a show to stay on the air changes with the times, too. And of course, animation that strays even one foot from inside the lines of kiddie fair (or isn’t just The Simpsons again) has never been successful in the States.

With the advent of streaming, though, it seemed for a brief and shining moment as if we had transcended these petty concerns. Suddenly, with people reverently tithing to Netflix every month, it seemed like there could be a home for off-beat shows with unique concepts, great performances, and slick production values, all with the need for merely, say, millions of eyeballs rather than tens of millions of them. This is a service that can make a multi-season critical darling out of a show about a sad anthropomorphic horse.

And, in what has turned out to be a boon for American viewers in my opinion, Netflix also has had to comply with laws in some countries that mandate a certain percentage of their productions are locally produced, making Netflix an astoundingly good source of high quality international programming. Squid Game, Dark, and Thieves of the Wood are all great examples of shows I’ve considered to be can’t-miss.

So, naturally, it would stand to reason that a creepy, atmospheric, mystery thriller show with an international cast, co-created by Dark scribes Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, would also meet with success, maybe churn out two-to-three real bangin’ seasons, and become a reliable rewatch. I dared to believe that, since it looked as intelligent, intricately plotted, and slickly produced as their earlier time-traveling German murder mystery. (Seriously, go watch Dark.)

But I should’ve known better. Netflix’s 1899 built up a compelling case for itself just as the Streaming Wars had truly taken a turn. Now you apparently can make Jeff Goldblum into Zeus, yet cancel it before most folks can find two damn seconds to try to sit with the resulting show. If Dark and Squid Game represent what Netflix’s international streaming library can accomplish when you let talented creators get some of that Hollywood money, 1899 is one of the many sad bellwethers that seem to indicate that era is on its way to being over.

The Show

The Kerberos is a coal-fired passenger liner at the turn of the century, of the exact sort that will connect it with the Titanic or the Lusitania in the minds of viewers. We are introduced to its passengers and crew one by one—their personas, their fears, and also the disturbing dreams that bring them gasping out of their sleep at the start of each episode. Things are immediately wrong and creepy right from the jump: The ship receives a distress call from another ship owned by the same company. When they reach the abandoned passenger liner Prometheus and discover a lone, mute survivor aboard it, the company sends the Kerberos a Morse code message with just two words: SINK SHIP.

Like Dark, one of 1899’s largest assets is its ensemble, who are all worth calling out: Proto-psychologist Maura Franklin (Emily Beecham); the overwhelmed and haunted Captain Eyk (Andreas Pietschmann); incognito Iberian lovers Ángel and Ramiro (Miguel Bernardeau and José Pimentão); Ling Yi and Yuk Je, who are two Chinese women pretending to be Japanese because who can tell the difference (Isabella Wei and Gabby Wong); a young French married couple with pronounced marital problems, Clémence and Lucien (Mathilde Ollivier and Jonas Bloquet); and the manipulative and haughty Mrs. Wilson (Rosalie Craig) are just those in First Class. The Polish laborer Olek (Maciej Musial) is one of the coal-shovelers down in the engine room who becomes entangled with the other passengers seeking answers.

Down in steerage are a Danish family, each with their own troubles and struggles: Krester (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen) and Tove (Clara Rosager) are the adult children and most active in trying to unravel the disturbing mystery at the heart of the Kerberos’ ship company. And the ship has its share of stowaways: The betrayed former Legionnaire, Jérome (Yann Gael), and a mysterious man with a device that can control the machines in the secret underbelly of the Kerberos (Aneurin Barnard). Maura and the Captain find themselves fighting some of this expansive cast and many angry members of the passengers and crew as they try to defend the Prometheus’ lone survivor, a creepy boy (Fflyn Edwards).

It’s an overwhelmingly large ensemble for an eight-episode show, and the result is that not all characters are created equal. We are privy to the nightmares and interiority of some of the passengers, but not all; we receive flashbacks and deeper reveals that explain the pathologies of some of the passengers, but not all. For most of those first-class passengers, though, you’re in for an eventual reveal of a Deep, Dark Secret which puts their fears and anxieties into a shocking new context, all while the situation aboard the Kerberos rapidly deteriorates from episode to episode. Trust breaks down, nightmares become manifest in the waking world, and at every turn the sea and sky themselves seem to thwart Eyk and Maura’s plans to get the ship back on course and uncover what’s really going on. Why are there hatches below the beds of the principal characters that seem to lead nowhere? What happened to the crew of the Prometheus and why does a partially burned passenger manifest list Maura and Eyk on it? What has caused people to start dying randomly or, in one disturbing sequence, leap to their watery deaths overboard en masse?

1899 provides definitive answers to most of these questions if you think about it after the final curtain—like Dark, it is admirable in not holding the viewer’s hand when it isn’t strictly necessary. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to get to them, partly due to trying to give ample space for each of its main characters’ past traumas. The result is a show oozing with atmosphere that is somehow both briskly paced but also occasionally confusing. And, it must be said, the eventual reveal at the end of the season puts a hole or two in the plot.

Spoilers for a show that isn’t coming back: The entire scenario of 1899 is a simulation, one that Maura and the rest have been trapped in for an indeterminate amount of time, as evidenced by a graveyard of dozens of abandoned ocean liners. Maura is saved by the mysterious interlopers on the ship, waking up to discover that she is… aboard a spaceship two hundred years in the future.

This is achieved by laying hands on a McGuffin which requires a key Maura has had on her person (unbeknownst to her until the very end). It is a device which boots her from the simulation. The trouble is that the mysterious boy is holding it as soon as she finds him, it is revealed that his goal is to free her, and he could’ve just explained it and given it to her right then and there. It’s a situation where the writers seem as if they weren’t quite sure what the answer to the mystery was in its particulars until later in the process.

But I’ve enjoyed worse shows with bigger plot holes. 1899 has every possible thing to recommend it: A twisty mystery plot, unparalleled set design and art direction, an interesting interplay of languages among its international cast, and stakes that keep rising from episode to episode.

So Why Did It Get Canceled?

The algorithm? A low “completion rate?” A decline in subscribers at around the time it first came out? Any of these things could be the reason, or none of them could be. Netflix doesn’t meaningfully disclose any information on how well its shows are doing beyond just saying they’re in the Top 10, and if they are lying about that, we cannot know.

The streaming age has come to be defined by a kind of callous disregard for anything that any particular viewer or creator might actually want in favor of appeasing some line of code or particular executive’s stock portfolio—things that by their definition have no taste or preference, no bias toward a thing’s qualities. No algorithm is going to see any of the adjectives that could describe 1899 and conclude that they will move 100 million eyeballs to watch it. As I write this, I learn that we are now apparently doing a live-action remake of How To Train Your Dragon, a movie that came out like 10 seconds ago and which can only be worsened by putting some poor kids in front of a green screen and leaving cast members of color to get harassed online.

Maybe we don’t deserve shows like 1899.

Best Episodes

It’s just an eight-episode run, all of them intricately linked together. I recommend taking eight hours of your life and sitting with this one, from the wine-dark seas to the black pyramid at the edge of nightmares.

Shows to soothe the pain

For more from Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, I reiterate that Dark is a great way to spend your time orbiting around the solar system.

If you like mystery thrillers about folks trapped in a nightmarish situation with a big focus on character reveals, Yellowjackets is your outfit.

Those who need their twisty mysteries with a side of impeccable art direction should sign up for Severance.

Tune in next month as One Season Wonders (totally legally) revisits a show that has entirely vanished from streaming: Disney Plus’ Willow.

Kenneth Lowe is at the door. You can follow him on Bluesky @illusiveken.bsky.social, and read more at his blog.