"Would it be in prestige comedies, like BoJack Horseman, or prestige-flavored dramas, like House of Cards? I'm not sure anybody was expecting the answer to come from a popcorn horror thriller that premiered that July. But the success of Stranger Things, which is about to end its run after nearly a decade, told us that the future of streaming TV was largely in the past."
"I don't mean merely that the series is a period piece, though its evocation of the 1980s in small-town Hawkins, Ind., is a big part of the appeal; you can almost smell the hair spray and taste the Orange Julius. I mean that the series is an entertainment machine built by repurposing vintage pop-culture parts something that streaming would come to specialize in."
In the summer of 2016 streaming TV remained unsettled, with Netflix producing originals alongside Amazon and Hulu while Disney+, Apple TV and HBO Max were still future projects. Stranger Things became a surprise breakout, signaling a streaming turn toward nostalgia-driven entertainment. The series evokes 1980s small-town life and assembles familiar genre elements—Spielbergian coming-of-age, Stephen King horror, '80s supernatural typography, John Hughes teen archetypes—alongside curated musical and cinematic references. The show operates as an entertainment machine that repurposes vintage pop-culture parts into a cohesive retro pastiche that streaming platforms would increasingly specialize in.
Read at www.nytimes.com
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