They transplanted the Loop itself from Sweden to Ohio, but the episodes are full of scenes which look like Stalenhag's paintings. Every so often they throw in an establishing or a closing shot that is composed and lit like one of the scenes that inspired the series. The landscape around the town that this story is set in is littered with abandoned artifacts that no one even looks at.
It's a visual delight. After being a fan of Stalenhag's work for so long, it's wonderful to see the world he created in motion.
The episodes are paced slow. This is both good and bad. The first ep, I saw the twist about a mile away, but it didn't detract from the story at all. Second ep I was "meh" about. Third ep was better but it's an old trope for SF anthology series and I saw it a mile away. Fourth ep--
Probably could have watched the whole series at one sitting without half trying. Understand, the stories they're telling here are the ones that TV SF series always tell, and they are told very well here. We care about the characters and their situations, and unlike a lot of current TV series, I know the characters' names, and knew them without needing to look it up on IMDB.com.
Also unlike a lot of current TV series? The characters are allowed to be people, rather than check boxes on an SJW diversity list. The race of the characters is utterly irrelevant. If there are any homosexual characters, it's not obvious, mainly because it's irrelevant to the stories being told.
The sour note is that "the Loop" is essentially a source of magic.
The world of the Loop, in Stalenhag's book, is a technological one, in which the research done at the Loop facility enabled human beings to do a lot of things we currently cannot do, but which can be understood as reasonably logical extensions of current technology. The artifacts that litter the landscape are relics from past experiments. Most are inert. Some still work, but do reasonably logical things.
In the TV series, this is not so. I can't explain it without spoilers, I'm sorry to say, but things happen in the story which are either driven or resolved by "freakin' magic", stuff which is impossible to one exent or another.
Still--this is a really good series. Stalenhag himself is listed as an "executive producer" and he was heavily involved with the series, and everything has the right look and feel to the extent that I figure it can't be too far off the mark even with "freakin' magic".
Looking forward to seeing the rest of it, that's for sure, and I'm sad there are only eight eps. Hopefully there'll be a second season, at least.
