Eleven only said 246
words throughout
Season One of Stranger
Things, most of which were
‘no’ and ‘papa’.REVIEWS TV
Stranger Things
Season Three
Stranger still
Release Out now
Showrunners The Duffer Brothers
Cast Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie
Bobbie Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp
Distributor Netflix
Certificate 15
FormatThings get even more difficult for
Hawkins, Indiana, in the third season
of Eighties-inspired sci-fi mystery
series Stranger Things. Will Byers
may be back from both the Upside-Down and
the clutches of the Mind Flayer, but there’s
something even more sinister lurking in the
shadows of the once-sleepy town.
Everything is bright, shiny and covered in
sweat as the show enters the summer of 1985
and Hawkins gets a brand-new mall; the new
hot spot for teens all over town. Those teens
include the ST gang, the former bike-riding kids
we know and love, and with the shift in age
comes an entertaining shift in priorities (mainly
kissing girls).The Boys
Season One
Shock and gore
Release 26 July
Showrunner Eric Kripke
Cast Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr,
Erin Moriarty, Elisabeth Shue
Distributor Amazon
Certificate 18
FormatHughie (Jack Quaid) is devastated
when his girlfriend is accidentally killed
by a superhero, so when rogue black-
ops guy Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) offers
him the chance to get revenge on corrupt superhero
team The Seven, Hughie finds himself on a path of
danger and blood. In the meantime, Starlight (Erin
Moriarty) joins The Seven and finds her idealistic
dreams of saving people as a superhero are a joke.
The Boys takes its name from Butcher’s anti-supes
team, who are gradually assembled across the
course of the season, but it’s The Seven who steal
the show. The messed-up superheroes are led
by Antony Starr’s Homelander, an all-American
monster who can ratchet up the tension in a scene
with one smile.
There’s something thrillingly subversive aboutseeing superheroes portrayed as irreverently as
they are in The Boys. This is the power fantasy taken
to its bleak, big-business end, where superheroes
are more interested in PR cash-ins and illicit sex
clubs than in saving people, and you can’t help but
titter in shock at the show’s insane excesses.
That said, the show wisely reins in some of the
elements of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s
comic book series. Sexual assault still features but
isn’t played for laughs here, and Hughie’s grief
and Starlight’s growing disillusionment ground the
show in real issues. Urban’s crazily-accented Billy
Butcher starts off as outlandish comic relief until
we – and Hughie – have been around him long
enough to realise that his filthy jokes are coveringan alarmingly destructive nature. There are enough
serious notes to ground the excesses, and the show
is all the better for them.
The action in the series is memorably inventive;
the first-episode battle with invisible superhero
Translucent is particularly great, and its fun to see
laser vision put to a purpose Superman wouldn’t
dream of. Finding new takes on superheroes in
this crowded marketplace is challenging, but The
Boys manages it, alongside a hefty dig at the big
corporations behind them.
Abigail Chandler
Mix those growing pains with the horrors
that come out of the Upside-Down and you get
almost eight hours of glorious, non-stop fun.
The new season isn’t perfect: a few highlights
from earlier seasons are used again, but some
feel old already. Eleven continues to use
blindfolds and white noise to create sensory
deprivation experiences to spy on people like
it’s nothing, Nancy and Jonathan’s budding
relationship no longer inspires emotion, and
Will is still deeply unhappy but his well-being
isn’t quite as concerning as it has been in
the past.
However, there are still plenty of old tricks
that only get better the deeper into the series
we get. The possibly-romantic tension between
Hopper and Joyce is even more delicious, the
monsters are bigger, better and grosser, and the
friendship between Steve and Dustin, which
ended up being one of the best surprises of
Season Two, is still on the up, with Joe Keery
and Gaten Matarazzo lighting up every scene
they are in.
The series occasionally suffers from pacing
problems, with a little bit of plot taking a
few episodes to happen, and a lot of the plothappening in the space of a day. But it’s still
great at filling the scenes that lack story with
heart and humour, both of which the cast has by
the dozen. One of Stranger Things’ best qualities
is its characters, and with each passing season
finale it gets harder to say goodbye.
Poppy-Jay Palmer