This essay includes spoilers for “Stranger Things” and the first season of “Dark.”

It’s a dark night in a rural town surrounded by woods. People are frantically searching for a little boy who has gone missing. The police seem inept to help. The reason he has gone missing is inexplicable and, perhaps, supernatural.

No, this is not a description of the very first episode of “Stranger Things,” but of another engrossing Netflix sci-fi thriller set (in part) in the past: the German time-travel adventure series “Dark.” The two shows are often compared, and understandably so — when the characters in “Dark” go back in time, for instance, they often travel to the mid-1980s, the same period in which Eleven and Will explore the Upside Down. There’s also a core group of kids who share a dynamic not unlike the “Stranger Things” friends in Hawkins, Ind.

But the similarities end there. While Matt and Ross Duffer's nostalgic trip explores the lives of their characters for the sake of the plo t — each “Stranger Things” season begins by establishing relationships and characterizations before it’s all largely forsaken when the monsters turn up — “ Dark” uses the plot to explore and deepen its characters and themes.