Complaints that scenes are too dark to follow have become routine. The images are usually rendered correctly and are being viewed in conditions they were never graded for.
Grading happens in a room nothing else matches
A colourist works in a darkened suite on a calibrated reference monitor, deciding how much detail sits in the shadows and how far the image can be pushed before it becomes murk.
That room has controlled ambient light and a screen with known behaviour, so subtle separation between near-black tones is clearly visible.
The same file played in a lit living room on a consumer television loses exactly that separation, because ambient light raises the apparent black level.
Digital sensors changed what directors could attempt
Film stock had limited latitude in low light and grain rose sharply when underexposed, which pushed cinematographers to light scenes more.
Modern sensors capture usable images at very low light levels, so a scene can be shot with a single practical source and still resolve faces.
Directors use that capability deliberately. Darkness becomes a storytelling tool rather than a technical limit, and the aesthetic has spread across prestige television and film alike.
Compression removes the subtlety first
Streaming delivers a compressed signal, and encoders allocate data where the eye notices it most. Smooth dark gradients are among the first areas to lose fidelity.
The result is banding and flattened shadow, so detail that survived the grade does not survive the delivery at a constrained bitrate.
Variable bandwidth makes it inconsistent. The same scene can look acceptable on one viewing and unreadable on another depending on what the connection was doing.
Television defaults fight the image
Sets ship in a showroom-oriented mode tuned to look bright under strong retail lighting, and that setting distorts the tone curve at the dark end.
Motion smoothing and dynamic contrast features process the picture further, sometimes crushing shadows in pursuit of a punchier look.
Filmmaker-oriented picture modes exist to disable that processing, but they are not the default and most viewers never change them.
High dynamic range widened the gap
Wide-range formats allow much brighter highlights and deeper shadows, and grades made for them assume a display that can reproduce both.
When that signal is converted for a display with less range, the mapping choices are made by the television rather than by the people who made the film.
So the same title can look correct on one screen and unwatchable on another, and neither the audience nor the filmmakers control which happens.