The best publicity a program can get is via word of mouth. Even after all the advertising and campaigning and social media posts, what really matters is good content. Good content drives good reviews, and results in good publicity. I just finished binge watching the first season of ‘Stranger Things’ , which debuted on Netflix. It is an awesome piece of TV fiction. The story sound cheesy, there are kids running around un-supervised, monsters from another dimension, and evil government projects run by shady old men. But the treatment of this work and the spectacular acting by the cast of this show convinces us, the viewer, that everything depicted actually took place.
I guess that convincingness the core of this story. The internet is going ga-ga over all the 80s culture references sprinkled across the episodes. But the simplicity of that time before internet and cellphones allowed a little more realism. Today there are too many scenes in shows and movies depicting charachters simply talking into their phones. And there is an app for anything. The joy of the analog radio , ham radios, and big cathode ray televisions denotes simplicity.
But the best part of this show is the cast. Specially, the young cast. The chidren. There are 11-12 year old children playing the primary protagonists inthe show, and their controlled acting was mindblowing. Most hollywood actors of today can’t act even half as well these young studs. I was similarly surprised last year when that TV show The Whispers aired. The child actors of that show were years ahead of their adult peers, but the show itself suffered from shoddy writing, and went bonkers. Stranger , however, is supported by excellent writing, and witty dialogues. Crown jewel is of course Millie, who plays the telekinetic young girl, and she has the least number of dialogues in the show, at times communicating only with gasps and meaningful stares. This girl is going places. My favourite charachter though, was Dustin.
I can’t wait for this show to be renewed, so I can continue this time travel to the good old eighties….and what happened to Will ?
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