Tales from the Loop review: small-town America goes sci-fi

Tales from the Loop is so pretty it breaks your heart. Based on the work of Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, famous for his scenes of pastoral tranquility draped around uncanny sci-fi sights, Amazon’s newest drama is a collection of eight short stories where everyday rural life is tinged with the supernatural. But unlike, say, Stranger Things, where the otherworldly takes center stage, Tales from the Loop uses it as an excuse to dig deeper into the people who must continue to live mundane lives, even as the extraordinary looms just inches away.

While Tales from the Loop features a recurring cast of characters and overlapping plots, each episode functions as a standalone short story. Since critics were sent three out-of-order episodes for...

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