Stranger Things – Review
Stranger Things turned up on Netflix in July and, within a fortnight, half the people we know had started talking like a games manual from 1983. The Duffer brothers built an eight-episode haunt in Hawkins, Indiana, and then had the nerve to make it about the kids more than the monster.
The pitch is familiar on purpose. A missing boy, a small town, a girl with a shaved head and a power she did not ask for, lights that talk. The show does not pretend it invented any of that. What keeps it from being fancy dress is the cast. Winona Ryder plays a mother nobody believes, and she plays it like that belief is the only thing keeping the house standing. Millie Bobby Brown does more with a stare than most series manage with a speech.
The boys are allowed to be annoying, which is how you know they were written by people who remember being twelve. Their campaign jargon is not a wink at the audience. It is how they organise fear. When the game at the table and the woods outside start using the same words, the show clicks into place.
It is not flawless. A few laboratory scenes are doing homework the rest of the series has already finished, and the nostalgia needle occasionally sticks. None of that matters much when the Christmas lights come on and the room goes quiet.
The worry is what happens next. This season knew exactly how long to stay. We will turn up for another one anyway. Some shows you recommend. This one, by the time someone asks, you have already finished.