Dark, a family saga with a supernatural twist, is set in a German town in present day where the disappearance of two young children exposes the double lives and fractured relationships among four families. In ten, hour-long episodes, the story takes on a supernatural twist that ties back to the same town in 1986.

The show is based on the best-selling novel Der Nasse Fisch (The Wet Fish) by German writer Volker Kutscher, the first of his Gereon Rath novels. Set in 1920s Berlin, they follow police detective Rath, who is transferred to Berlin and tries to solve crimes in a city torn by social and political upheaval in the years leading up to Adolf Hitler's rise to power.