Tales From the Loop Is Good

My family has been watching Tales From the Loop on Amazon Prime, and we are all enjoying it, which is unusual as we all have differing tastes (that do overlap sometimes) in TV shows. Tales is very good, understated science fiction that, if I had to come up with an elevator pitch for it, I would describe as "Ray Bradbury meets Stranger Things".

There are no aliens or monsters, although there is some weird tech that's never really explained, and sometimes bad things happen to people. But there's a pastoral feeling to the stories, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury at his best, that is quite unusual in modern SF&F television. Each episode stands alone, although are there are some links between them, and the stories are very much driven by their (often young) characters, again unusual today.

It reminds me of the excellent Years and Years that I reviewed earlier this year; although they're thematically very different, both shows dump you into their world and proceed with their stories without much explanation. It's a technique that William Gibson uses to great effect in his novels; a technique that some viewers (or readers, in the case of Gibson) may find difficult to follow, but that I like very much.

Book and Film Review has a highly favourable review of the show that echoes my feelings perfectly.

As a whole, Tales from the Loop lets its messages come through by understatement. That goes along with its overall feel. The setting is a lived-in small town, almost feudal in its social structure, surrounded by stubble fields and overgrown woods. The phones are mostly rotaries, but there are robots you can control via a pair of well-worn gloves. Even the mysterious Loop complex, source of the wonders that feed the plot, is all tube monitors and dirty concrete. There are few, if any, orchestral swells in the soundtrack telling you how to feel about what you’re seeing: it’s mostly subdued piano and recorder and strings, courtesy of composer Philip Glass (in his first television score). Unlike its most obvious predecessor, The Twilight Zone, there’s not much in this show that’s going to manipulate you into reacting to it one way or another.

That’s what makes it brilliant. In contrast to other current science fiction shows, it creates a world where human decisions matter. Take for instance Devs or Westworld, each of which falls into some version of determinism. Both shows feature an all-seeing computer that reduces humanity to bits of data, so much so that in Devs even the one choice beyond the computer’s reach leads to the literal reduction of two personalities to zeros and ones. They don’t seem to mind: better conscious simulacra than dead. The shows’ assassinations, international intrigue, and techie slickness are fun to look at, but they amount to no more than a gloss over a misanthropic tableau. Tales from the Loop is a show about people grappling with the implications of technology, not about people becoming indistinguishable from technology. Watch it if you want a little help rekindling your hope for humankind.