From the start, Black Spot has been a case study in how the whole can be equal or less than the sum of its parts. Lush location filming and thoughtful character work that tells much of the emotional story simply via well lit closeups on their faces, juxtaposed with perfunctory mysteries and recycled horror imagery: The combination frustrates because anyone capable of pulling off the former ought to know better than serving up the latter.

Titled “The End Is Only the Beginning” with almost maddening bluntness, the show’s cliffhanger season finale offers yet more evidence of this irritating tendency. Yet for once, the surprise reveals are—almost—as good as anything else on the show. Making it work in the final hour is a mystery alright, but it’s a happy one despite it all.

I reviewed the surprisingly engaging season finale of Black Spot, which still isn’t the show it could be, for Decider.

Black Spot has a strong, quiet cast that does great work with what they’re given. It’s as good at landscapes and intimate closeups as any show you’d care to name right now. I mean, look at this:

But as long as it keeps both telegraphing and pulling its punches, depending on the episode, it’s never going to feel worthy of the raw material with which it’s working. It will never see the forest for the trees.

I reviewed the season finale of Black Spot for Decider.

If you’ve watched six episodes of Black Spot so far, it’s a fair bet you can figure out what’s going on in the seventh. For the most part, anyway—and it’s that “for the most part” that’s the key.

While its done-in-one mystery is as simplistic as ever, “The Secret Behind the Window” (note: no windows are involved) is much more concerned with the overarching mysteries—the secret of the woodsman, the disappearance of Marion Steiner, the dirty deeds her father and grandfather are up to—and with the emotions of the main characters. You don’t have to be a great detective to figure out that this is a marked improvement over its predecessors.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Black Spot Season One for Decider.

If you’ve watched six episodes of Black Spot so far, it’s a fair bet you can figure out what’s going on in the seventh. For the most part, anyway—and it’s that “for the most part” that’s the key.

While its done-in-one mystery is as simplistic as ever, “The Secret Behind the Window” (note: no windows are involved) is much more concerned with the overarching mysteries—the secret of the woodsman, the disappearance of Marion Steiner, the dirty deeds her father and grandfather are up to—and with the emotions of the main characters. You don’t have to be a great detective to figure out that this is a marked improvement over its predecessors.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Black Spot Season One for Decider.

How many times can you say the same things about the same show, I wonder. Well, let me see. How many episodes does Black Spot run again? The awkwardly titled “Dark Heroes” is the sixth installment of the most aggressively mixed bag of a Netflix show I’ve seen so far. By now, if you don’t have its like-clockwork rhythms committed to memory, you should probably set your content filter to “Kids” to avoid complex narratives entirely.

I reviewed episode six of Black Spot for Decider.

How many times can you say the same things about the same show, I wonder. Well, let me see. How many episodes does Black Spot run again? The awkwardly titled “Dark Heroes” is the sixth installment of the most aggressively mixed bag of a Netflix show I’ve seen so far. By now, if you don’t have its like-clockwork rhythms committed to memory, you should probably set your content filter to “Kids” to avoid complex narratives entirely.

I reviewed episode six of Black Spot for Decider.

Two very, very different images of post-mortem movement bookend “The End of the Road,” yet another drearily predictable mystery wrapped in sumptuous cinematography and magnetic acting in Black Spot‘s ever-growing tally. It’s like taking Woodward & Bernstein and using it to wrap the catch of the day.

The real asskicker is that if creator Mathieu Missoffe had gotten half as creative with the script as the filmmakers and cast have gotten with what they’re doing, so many of the show’s problems would be nothing but dodged bullets.

I reviewed episode five of Black Spot for Decider.

I dunno, folks, I really just don’t know. The more I watch the more I feel that Black Spot is just an extremely well-made primetime broadcast-network supernatural cop show that could be so much more. I suppose we’ll get to the bottom of it in the end.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Black Spot for Decider.

I’m starting to think that I’d make an excellent addition to the Villefranche police department. Could I help them account for their town’s unusually high rate of violent crime? Free the people and the surrounding forest from the grip of the Steiner family? Figure out what the hell is up with the weird antler-man making all that infernal racket out there in the woods? No, no, and no. But I sure could solve murder cases a lot quicker than Major Weiss’s cuddly cops, I can tell you that much.

I reviewed episode four of Black Spot for Decider.

It’s no fun at all to watch a mystery you’re halfway to solving by the time you actually see the crime. It’s especially no fun when the mystery in question is this well shot, well cast, and well acted. The cast, led by Suliane Brahim as Major Weiss and Laurent Capelluto as District Attorney Sirani, are warm and endearing—even Weiss and Siriani, the prickliest of the bunch. Meanwhile, director Thierry Poiraud is as proficient with landscapes as he is with closeups. Both are used to convey isolation and fear in a way that’s far more moving than the mystery material.

I reviewed the fourth episode of this frustrating series for Decider.

Episode 3, “The Void,” illustrates a major potential problem with the show’s approach: If you’re going to have eight mysteries a season, you have to be good at writing mysteries.

I reviewed the third episode of Black Spot for Decider.

Like all paranormal mystery series, Black Spot wants to be a “binge watch it until the answers are revealed” kind of show. That’s not a criticism—not of the show and not even of Netflix, the most binge-watch dependent of all TV networks. Before the concept of binge-watching even existed Lost was built this way on ABC, just like Twin Peaks was built this way on ABC before it (and on Showtime after it). From those two examples alone I hope it’s clear that you can do good things with this compulsive-viewing format. In the case of Twin Peaks you can do literally the best thing ever done on television with it. If Black Spot wants us to binge watch until we find out just what the hell is happening in Villefranche, more power to it.

Like some paranormal mystery series, Black Spot also wants to be an episodic procedural kind of show. That’s a bit more unusual. I’m not even talking about the “monster/killer of the week” structure like I’ve done in previous reviews; obviously that’s a pretty common approach to genre work on television, or at least it used to be. I’m referring here to the fact that in each episode there’s a small crime-based mystery in addition to the larger paranormal ones, and the police and district attorney who are our main characters investigate that crime, and then they solve that crime. That’s the way Black Spot is going from Point A to Point B with its overarching plot: by going from Exhibit A to Exhibit B until each individual episode’s mystery is solved.

Episode 3, “The Void,” illustrates a major potential problem with this approach: If you’re going to have eight mysteries a season, you have to be good at writing mysteries.

I reviewed episode three of Black Spot for Decider.

Here’s what we know about Black Spot as of the completion of Episode 2. Pretend I’m about a half dozen quirky law enforcement professionals piecing this together if that helps.

It’s a paranormal cop show that keeps an overarching mystery—who or what is stalking the people of the murder-happy forest town of Villefranche—on a low simmer while bringing a new case to a boil each episode. That places it more with the “monster/serial killer of the week” mold of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The X-Files, and Hannibal Season One than with Twin Peakseven at its most episodic.

It’s not above tossing a crying baby off a cliff into a roaring river as a fakeout to drum up cheap heat.

It occasionally displays striking proficiency with horror-fantasy imagery and makes the absolute most out of its misty arboreal setting.

It’s not above buying slo-mo shots and horror-movie music cues wholesale to drive its points home.

It’s pretty good at setting its top cop, Laurène Weiss, apart from a bajillion other characters in her tough-as-nails-but-full-of-secrets vein, courtesy of actor Suliane Brahim, the head of an engaging, attractive, even amusing ensemble.

It’s not above dipping into horror-imagery wells—like mysterious symbols and antlered monsters and the proverbial wolf in the woods—you’d think would have run dry by now.

Seeing a pattern emerge just yet?

I reviewed episode two of Black Spot for Decider.

Titled “A Wolf’s Dream” after the white wolf (“Ghost! To me!”) that keeps appearing to Major Weiss, and eventually just to the viewers at home, the show’s second episode feels indicative of both a high creative ceiling and a low creative floor. Creator Mathieu Missoffe, director Theirrey Poiraud, and company have a lot of things going for them, but originality isn’t one of them, and I worry that will come back to bite them in the end.

I reviewed episode two of Black Spot for Decider.

In a remote logging town near a secluded forest, a young woman is found murdered. Her death is just the latest in a long string of crimes, including the disappearances of at least two teenage girls over a period of years. The wealthy owner of the town’s ailing sawmill isn’t telling everything he knows to the chief of the town’s slightly comic police department, who has secrets too.

Into the mix steps a quirky outsider, a lawman from the big city sent to get to the bottom of things. Something about the place intrigues him, so he rents a room in a local hotel. Looks like he’ll be staying in this little town for a while.

Sound familiar? Every bit as familiar as Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks theme song, I’ll bet.

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s three-seasons-and-a-movie masterpiece has cast a long shadow over television, with “weird events in a woodland town” at least as popular a dramatic subgenre as that post-Sopranos mainstay, “our protagonist is a gangster.” And Black Spot falls squarely within that macabre penumbra.

I’m covering the French Netflix paranormal drama Black Spot for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere. 

(Note: I’m playing catchup with links to my work so these review descriptions will all be pretty brief. I guess you’ll just have to watch the reviews!)

In a remote logging town near a secluded forest, a young woman is found murdered. Her death is just the latest in a long string of crimes, including the disappearances of at least two teenage girls over a period of years. The wealthy owner of the town’s ailing sawmill isn’t telling everything he knows to the chief of the town’s slightly comic police department, who has secrets too.

Into the mix steps a quirky outsider, a lawman from the big city sent to get to the bottom of things. Something about the place intrigues him, so he rents a room in a local hotel. Looks like he’ll be staying in this little town for a while.

Sound familiar? Every bit as familiar as Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks theme song, I’ll bet.

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s three-seasons-and-a-movie masterpiece has cast a long shadow over television, with “weird events in a woodland town” at least as popular a dramatic subgenre as that post-Sopranos mainstay, “our protagonist is a gangster.” And Black Spot falls squarely within that macabre penumbra.

A loose almost anti-translation of the French title Zone Blanche, or “White Zone,” Black Spotrefers to the dead zone (that one’s taken) of cellular coverage in which the grim little town of Villefranche and its surrounding forest are located. If the pilot episode for this Netflix import proves anything, it’s that that particular zone is pretty roomy. Opportunities to color within the lines drawn by both Davids, Chase and Lynch, abound. You may not score any points for originality, but you can still paint an engaging picture.

I’m covering the Netflix show Black Spot for Decider this season, starting with my review of the series premiere.

(Note: I’m playing catch-up here so these review descriptions will be minimal moving forward. I guess you’ll just have to read the reviews!)