You’d think that, eventually, they’d run out of things to do studies and documentaries on, but don’t tell that to the folks at the History Channel.  They sent me a copy of Marked: The Complete Season One to review, and it’s a bizarre, unsettling little documentary series.

Marked takes a look at tattoos, plain and simple.  But as you might expect from a topic meriting a television show, it’s really not that simple.  Tattoos have numerous different meanings, depending on who gets it, and where they get it done.  A tattoo done in prison may well mean something different if it’s done on the outside.  The teardrops on a man’s eyes may mean he’s lost loved ones, or killed people, or simply done a block of five years in prison, with each teardrop standing for five years.  And the tattoos go on from there, with different gangs having different symbols that mean different things.  It’s distressingly complex for something so simple, and Marked will explain a lot of it.

Basically, if you’ve ever thought about having ink done, Marked will explain what massive chunks of the images mean.  It’s not just a personal choice, and you’ll be amazed at the sheer adaptability of these “tags”.

But let’s face it…at the end of the day, this show is a show about tattoos, and tattoos alone.  It’s so niche, it’s locked in the closet.  If you have no interest in tattoos and their meaning, then you can pretty much forget about this show.  In fact, it can get downright tedious after a while.  But at the same time, they’re going to bring in such incredible amounts of information that it’s hard not to be at least mildly compelled by it.

Thanks to this show, I now know how to build my own tattoo gun.

Not that I ever would have any purpose for such a device, of course, but I know how.

Its greatest virtue–its wealth of information on tattooing–is also its greatest failing.  It’s so spectacularly limited that it’s almost dull in a lot of parts.  As much as I learned by watching it, I’m still pretty bored by the whole thing.

And the Screenhead Ten Scale feels my conflict, handing the History Channel‘s Marked: The Complete Season One a six out of ten for being a thousand miles deep and three inches wide.  It’s very, VERY, specific, and this specificity gives incredible focus.  Possibly, too much focus.