TV REVIEW: ‘Tales from the Loop’, where wonder becomes ordinary

Duncan Joiner as Cole in Tales from the Loop, based on the artwork by Simon Stålenhag.

For all the complaining we do about new things, we’re remarkably good at adaptation. We all casually carry devices in our pockets with computing power that scientists and even science fiction writers might not have dreamed of fifty years ago. It’s sobering to think about how quickly we get used to these tools, and how quickly we accept them as part of life.

It’s that process of technological integration, and how people become blind to it, that drives the work of Simon Stålenhag, a Swedish digital artist who creates striking pieces of retro-futurism. His paintings often depict disused robots, left to rust by the roadside, or hyper-advanced buildings looming over an otherwise rural landscape. Often the humans in these works seem totally at ease in these environments, just going about their day. There’s a sense that the arrival of these objects may have come suddenly and maybe violently, but now they’re just part of the scenery. There’s none of that “let’s take back our planet”, Independence Day vibe here.

Stålenhag’s art has become the basis for a new sci-fi show on Amazon Prime Video, Tales from the Loop. It comes on the heels of the service’s other pursuits in the genre, including the acquisition of the excellent The Expanse (more on that in a future post) and the progressively more time-travel-y The Man in the High Castle. 

It’s possible that Amazon wanted a show to meet some of Netflix’s offerings head-on; some have drawn comparisons between Tales from the Loop and both Black Mirror and Stranger Things. But whereas Netflix’s series trade in moral gut-punches and retro horror thrills, Amazon is going a different way: quiet, contemplative stories that make us mindful of technology, but don’t make us want to break our phones in half and become hermits in the woods.

Sci-fi structures loom over regular Midwestern landscapes.

Tales from the Loop takes place in what appears to be a small Midwestern town, which hosts the Loop, a highly advanced, underground research facility (there’s your Stranger Things parallel). However, this isn’t a locked-down government facility. Like CERN in Switzerland, there’s a spirit of open collaboration at the Loop, and it has unlocked all sorts of strange technologies that were previously thought impossible. 

Vestiges of the Loop’s transformation of the town are everywhere: three huge towers with glowing blue lights peer over the landscape, and many homes have strange high-tech objects grafted onto them, their exact purpose unclear. A cute (though huge) bipedal robot peeks out of the woods at people walking past. The time period is left purposefully vague. The clothes, cars, and architecture seem to straddle the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s simultaneously, putting everything in harsher contrast against the mysterious additions by the Loop.

The stories have an anthology format to them, in that each episode follows a different character. Unlike Black Mirror, though, the stories are all connected. A character glimpsed briefly in one episode will eventually get an installment of her own. The high-tech discoveries at the Loop figure into each one, but we’re never left with the sense that the show is trying to sound dire warnings about its viewers’ relationship with their phones or social media. Tales from the Loop is more interested in broader existential concerns, like time or loneliness, than in specific fears, like social credit systems or sadistic criminal justice programs.

Shepherding some of our journeys around the Loop is Russ (Jonathan Pryce), the director of the research facility. It’s implied that Russ spent far too much time building the Loop and not enough on his family, and there’s a frigidity with his wife (Jane Alexander) and adult son (Paul Schneider) that feels especially tragic. We also meet Russ’ daughter-in-law Loretta (Rebecca Hall), a brilliant researcher in her own right, and her children Cole and Jacob. Many of the series’ episodes centre on Russ’ family, but we also encounter other residents of the town, including a high-schooler looking to preserve the rush of young love, and a repairman who buys a powerful robot to protect his home against a prowler.

Dan Bakkedahl plays a father trying to protect his family.

The series isn’t for everybody, in the way that something like Stranger Things is. There’s not much of an overarching plot driving any of the episodes or the season forward, and the show is severely allergic to exposition in dialogue. If you’re looking for someone to sit down and explain what’s happening, what the history of the Loop is, or what certain technology does, I counted maybe two quick examples of that across 8 hours of TV. It’s the sort of show that could only be made in the streaming era, when a series can keep most of its mysteries to itself without fear of cancellation mid-season. 

Befitting the paintings that it’s based on, Tales from the Loop is not a “throw it on in the background” kind of show. You have to engage with it and watch it attentively. But for those in the right mood, it can still transport you. The characters on this show may not have sleek rectangles of metal and glass in their pockets like we do; their technology is weathered and clunky, but has abilities that ours doesn’t, like control over time or levitation. But somehow the characters’ concerns are very familiar. They feel love and loss in the same way, and even the discoveries of the Loop can’t help them. Maybe the latest tech gizmo really is just another blip on the radar.

Tales from the Loop is available now on Amazon Prime Video.