Tales From The Loop Review: Finding The Beauty In Imperfection
With science fiction, the urge to go big and reach impossible heights is hard to ignore. But sometimes the most impactful and most interesting science fiction remains firmly planted on the ground, questioning the nature of humanity and our relationship to technology, and how it can be a means of pursuit but also a burden.
Tales From The Loop, the Amazon Prime Video series based on the books and tabletop game created by Simon Stalenhag, and created for television by Nathaniel Halpern, delves into the flaws and the hopes of a small town as they struggle with their reality and daily lives as strange occurrences and anomalies start to change things.
It’s an absolutely mesmerizing show, based on the three episodes provided for review. The Loop, the strange machine underneath the town that has peculiar properties, affect each episode and their particular focus in unique and fascinating ways, where it’s not questioning the basis of reality, but what reality is capable of.
When The Loop is considered as making the impossible possible, the mind immediately reels to the infinite. The technology that The Loop runs is curious but ominous, where it’s left up to the imagination to fill in the blanks with some subtle, clever pushes to send you thinking down different avenues.
But for Tales From The Loop, it smartly thinks inward to emotion, about the possibilities of humanity. It’s in the emotional core of each episode where the true power lies.
Tales From The Loop touches on heavy topics like regret, loss, loneliness, and death, but it does so with a sense of optimism, that despite all of the difficulties in life, life goes on as it always will in some form. It’s hope that drives home so many of these themes, and as Jonathan Pryce’s character muses at one point, “there’s always light in the dark.”
The show is driven by emotion and how it correlates to the unknown, how the unknown leaves so much up to interpretation.
It’s a quiet, methodical show for the most part, looking for answers to humanity rather than searching for answers to the mystery of what causes these anomalies. What’s causing it is there, fairly front and center, but solving it isn’t necessarily the focus. It’s the people it touches and the lives it changes, as people search for a part of themselves they have lost over time.
It can be downright heartbreaking at times when reality hits characters, with Rebecca Hall on the first episode, Jonathan Pryce on the fourth, and Ato Essandoh on the sixth. Over these three episodes provided for review (out of eight), it becomes clear that the show isn’t so interested in the why, but the what that it causes.
For that, Tales From The Loop finds a profound beauty in introspection, where the science is the catalyst to delving deeper into these people and their lives.
The performances are subtle, but they are full of depth. Ato Essandoh’s journey on the sixth episode is easy to connect to, his character so in conflict with himself that it’s fascinating to see a fairly familiar story take such a refreshing approach of digging deeper into what makes someone who they are.
Rebecca Hall’s Loretta is mostly the main character of the show, at least based on these episodes, and she makes for a wonderful lead as she balances the difficulties of The Loop work and her home as her past catches up with her. Hall plays Loretta with this sense of duty while the hollowness of that past hurdles back buried hardships that reflect back on her in the present.
It’s the kind of clever use of the show’s science to really tell a big picture story on the scale of one person, where that one story says so much about life, regrets, and its malleable way of changing us.
The score is inspiring and boosting, both the masterful Philip Glass and rising star Paul Leonard-Morgan creating an emotional, piano-centric sound that helps drive home the impact on these characters’ lives. The themes and the melodic riffs during quieter moments really help drive home moments, the unique style really building a mood.
It’s also a beautiful show, with directors like Mark Romanek and Andrew Stanton, to name a few, tackling episodes. The look of the show is a mixture of muted interiors and vibrant exteriors, where the snow and rain during particular scenes really help to set the tone. While these three episodes only hint at the larger scale of Stalenhag’s art, there is enough to set the impression that we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible with The Loop.
Tales From The Loop is the kind of show that delivers on an emotional level and leaves a lasting impression. Combined with the gorgeous photography, the seamless effects that bolster the science of the stories, and the impactful score, the show manages to capture the essence of what drives people, what makes them tick, and what makes them human.
There’s an incredibly special show here, and it has something important to say.
What did you think of this season of Tales From The Loop? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Tales From The Loop arrives on April 3 on Amazon Prime Video.
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Kevin Lever
Kevin Lever has been following television closely for most of his life, but in starting to cover it, he has grown a further appreciation. He strives to give the blockbusters their due, and give the lesser known shows a spotlight to find more fans.