The Signal (2024) – Netflix Series Review

THE SIGNAL (2024) on Netflix is a new miniseries from Germany (org. title: Das Signal). The series has four hour-long episodes. The ending is surprisingly strong and unexpected. Read our full The Signal miniseries review here!

THE SIGNAL (2024) is a new Netflix miniseries in the sci-fi, drama, and mystery genres. It’s from Germany (org. title: Das Signal), but the story is very universal, so don’t let that keep you from checking it out. If you’ve watched Dark, you’ll know how good German Netflix productions can be.

Feeling confused about the ending of THE SIGNAL?

Read our The Signal Ending Explained >

For the record, I’m a bit disappointed they didn’t just go with the German title of Das Signal. I mean, after the success of Das Boot – which most recently included a TV series – it seemed like an obvious choice. Especially as Netflix productions from Germany have a good reputation already.

Continue reading our The Signal miniseries review below. Find all episodes on Netflix from March 7, 2024.

Something is out there!

In The Signal, we meet the scientist Paula (Peri Baumeister) as she’s on a mission aboard the International Space Station. Oh yes, the setting is quite familiar if you’ve watched Constellation on Apple TV+ starring Noomi Rapace recently. These series have more similarities but the two plots are wildly different!

However, Paula isn’t your average astronaut, nor is she there on any kind of official mission. Instead, she’s there – along with her colleague Hadi (Hadi Khanjanpour) – on a trip paid for by the billionaire Mudhi (Sheeba Chaddha) to do scientific experiments.

It turns out that what Mudhi is really looking for is extraterrestrial life. She’s a philanthropist and she’s dying, so she’s dedicating her life (and fortune) to finding out if something is out there. And in The Signal, we’re about to discover that the answer seems to be yes. Something (or someone) is out there.

At the very least, someone is saying “Hello!”. Paula has found a signal from the ISS and the message isn’t coming from Earth. It’s coming from deep space!

There’s power (and danger) in knowledge

What Paula discovers is top secret as Mudhi convinces her that humans would attack the origin of the “Hello!” before ever looking into whether there is an actual threat. It would appear that there is danger involved with her having this knowledge (along with other information, I won’t divulge here).

Upon returning to Earth, Paula disappears without a trace on her flight home to Germany. In fact, the plane crashes in the Atlantic Ocean and Paula is immediately accused of having caused the crash. It results in her family being hounded and somehow blamed.

I did not care for this part of the story as it made no sense to me. Then again, when people are grieving, they react in strange ways, so I can buy into that part.

In any case, before the plane crashed, Paula managed to leave her husband Sven (Florian David Fitz) and their daughter Charlie (Yuna Bennett) with a riddle. It was the only way she could pass on what she discovered in the depths of space. Something that could change everything!

The strong ending of The Signal miniseries

As mentioned, you might know German Netflix productions such as the amazing series Dark, and this will probably be enough for you to check out The Signal. While both this new miniseries and the Dark series are in the sci-fi genre, the two are very different.

Unfortunately, Das Signal doesn’t come close to the level of Dark.

We’ve watched all four episodes of the miniseries for this review, which is why we can tell you that the ending of The Signal is both efficient and surprisingly strong. So while I could’ve wanted more from parts of this German genre series, I do want to salute the ending.

When you watch episode 3 (which I found to be the weakest one of the miniseries), you might think there can’t be much more to the story. But there is! In fact, most of the point of it all comes with the final reveals in the fourth and final episode.

I was ready for something wild or weird with terrible CGI (just being honest here), so I was pleasantly surprised at how the ending of The Signal was so strong!

Watch The Signal (2024) miniseries on Netflix!

The Signal is based on an idea by Nadine Gottmann and Sebastian Hilger. The scriptwriters are Florian David Fitz (who also stars as “Sven”), Nadine Gottmann, and Kim Zimmermann. The directors are Sebastian Hilger and Philipp Leinemann.

As mentioned, this German Netflix miniseries has just four episodes with a runtime of around one hour, so it’s a four-hour adventure. It could’ve been edited a bit tighter, but I enjoyed most of the plot details.

Also, I have to highlight the performance of the young Yuna Bennett, who plays Charlie. She’s the daughter of Paula and Sven and turns out to be a solid hybrid of her parents, who are a scientist and a history teacher respectively.

Her mother is an optimist and her father a pessimist, while Charlie is essentially a realistic hopeful. To me, Charlie is the beating heart of this story, and casting Yuna Bennett in the role was perfect.

The Signal miniseries is on Netflix from March 7, 2024.

Details

Directors: Sebastian Hilger, Philipp Leinemann
Writers: Florian David Fitz, Nadine Gottmann, Sebastian Hilger, Kim Zimmermann
Cast: Florian David Fitz, Peri Baumeister, Yuna Bennett, Nilam Farooq, Hadi Khanjanpour, Katharina Schüttler, Katharina Thalbach, Meret Becker, Uwe Preuss