There are no spoilers in this post, but some may follow as people (hopefully) watch the show.
I just finished binge-watching Tales from the Loop, an eight-episode semi-connected scifi anthology series on Amazon Prime, and I give it an "A". The series is based on the artwork and backstory created by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag (image heavy link) and an associated role-playing game, and is set in an alternate 1980s Ohio (unlike the Swedish locale in the artbook, but with similar idyllic countryside meets rundown towns and scrapped tech vistas as in the book), headquarters of a sci-tech company which in the 60s had created "The Loop", which consists of a particle accelerator (the titular Loop) and numerous associated physics-defying projects designed to "Make the Impossible, Possible" and which litter the otherwise rustic landscape in either defunct or working order depending on the project's status. Some of the artifacts of the Loop facility mixed among the countryside and humble farms very much resembles the Iowa of Star Trek '09 with its huge arcology structures amidst the corn fields.
The cinematography in the series is spectacular, as are the aforementioned tech abandoned all over the alternate Ohio countryside, which look like huge metal sculptures and creatures dotting the landscape. This is a world that's at once totally familiar but also way more advanced than ours. There are rust belt towns in decline and then a few miles away a magnificent steel city that looks like something out of Tomorrowland. There are beat up old cars and then hover-tractors. It all depends on what the company chose to work on.
Now, as far as those physics-defying technologies go, if you're looking for Treknobabble and complex explanations for the fantastic events and the mystery of the Loop that form the basis for each story, those are nowhere to be found. The main focus of this series is entirely on how those amazing events and tech affect the characters at the heart of each episode, and the tech or anomaly serves only as a catalyst for character development, and the show is that much the better for it. I would compare this to a more skiffy version of The Twilight Zone on CBS:AA or Amazing Stories on Apple TV (both excellent as well), which it was clearly greenlit to be Amazon Prime's answer to.
When I say the anthology series is semi-connected, it's because while most of the stories are independent of each other, they do involve members of a couple of different families and coworkers who all know each other in some way, and are featured multiple times throughout the series, sometimes in overlapping stories, or ones that are partially revisited for a concluding scene, or where one event sets up another. So, one episode might focus on a mother, then on her son, then the father, then the grandfather, than the son's friend, then the friend's sister, then the guard at the company they all work at, etc. But all their lives are dramatically altered by their work on or proximity to the Loop; sometimes through time travel, visiting alternate universes, consciousness transfer, encountering rogue AI robots, or using a repurposed robotic loader drone to guard your home.
It's not action-packed or a massive spectacle. It's very subdued and at times heartbreaking, I've heard it favorably compared to Stranger Things in a lot of reviews, and it does feature the mysterious company causing anomalies in a small middle America town and some episodes feature kids going on adventures, but that's about where the comparison ends. The stories are largely separate (instead of linear) from each other besides the familial or friendship or workplace connecting tissue, and besides a "monster" on an island, there's no horror elements, gruesome scenes, or anything beyond mild violence, so I'd recommend it for the whole family.
The cast:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8741290/
I just finished binge-watching Tales from the Loop, an eight-episode semi-connected scifi anthology series on Amazon Prime, and I give it an "A". The series is based on the artwork and backstory created by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag (image heavy link) and an associated role-playing game, and is set in an alternate 1980s Ohio (unlike the Swedish locale in the artbook, but with similar idyllic countryside meets rundown towns and scrapped tech vistas as in the book), headquarters of a sci-tech company which in the 60s had created "The Loop", which consists of a particle accelerator (the titular Loop) and numerous associated physics-defying projects designed to "Make the Impossible, Possible" and which litter the otherwise rustic landscape in either defunct or working order depending on the project's status. Some of the artifacts of the Loop facility mixed among the countryside and humble farms very much resembles the Iowa of Star Trek '09 with its huge arcology structures amidst the corn fields.
The cinematography in the series is spectacular, as are the aforementioned tech abandoned all over the alternate Ohio countryside, which look like huge metal sculptures and creatures dotting the landscape. This is a world that's at once totally familiar but also way more advanced than ours. There are rust belt towns in decline and then a few miles away a magnificent steel city that looks like something out of Tomorrowland. There are beat up old cars and then hover-tractors. It all depends on what the company chose to work on.
Now, as far as those physics-defying technologies go, if you're looking for Treknobabble and complex explanations for the fantastic events and the mystery of the Loop that form the basis for each story, those are nowhere to be found. The main focus of this series is entirely on how those amazing events and tech affect the characters at the heart of each episode, and the tech or anomaly serves only as a catalyst for character development, and the show is that much the better for it. I would compare this to a more skiffy version of The Twilight Zone on CBS:AA or Amazing Stories on Apple TV (both excellent as well), which it was clearly greenlit to be Amazon Prime's answer to.
When I say the anthology series is semi-connected, it's because while most of the stories are independent of each other, they do involve members of a couple of different families and coworkers who all know each other in some way, and are featured multiple times throughout the series, sometimes in overlapping stories, or ones that are partially revisited for a concluding scene, or where one event sets up another. So, one episode might focus on a mother, then on her son, then the father, then the grandfather, than the son's friend, then the friend's sister, then the guard at the company they all work at, etc. But all their lives are dramatically altered by their work on or proximity to the Loop; sometimes through time travel, visiting alternate universes, consciousness transfer, encountering rogue AI robots, or using a repurposed robotic loader drone to guard your home.
It's not action-packed or a massive spectacle. It's very subdued and at times heartbreaking, I've heard it favorably compared to Stranger Things in a lot of reviews, and it does feature the mysterious company causing anomalies in a small middle America town and some episodes feature kids going on adventures, but that's about where the comparison ends. The stories are largely separate (instead of linear) from each other besides the familial or friendship or workplace connecting tissue, and besides a "monster" on an island, there's no horror elements, gruesome scenes, or anything beyond mild violence, so I'd recommend it for the whole family.
The cast:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8741290/
