IT WAS A STRANGER THINGS SUMMER
The surprise supernatural hit made sci-fi fans of us all, says Paul Flynn
UNTIL SHE WAS SEQUESTERED to The Upside Down for reasons that promise to unravel in season 2 of Stranger Things, teen heroine Nancy’s luckless BFF Barb became 2017’s unlikely fashion headline. Styled somewhere between a backwater library assistant and muse for Gucci maestro Alessandro Michele, Barb’s unwittingly eccentric take on frump dressing (pie-crust collars, appliqué, Deirdre Barlow glasses, finger-waved russet hair) gave Normcore its definitive women’s angle. Anyone for Normacore?
Barb was just one of a thrilling succession of unforeseen casting, styling and storytelling triumphs in the TV show of the year. Stranger Things arrived as if from nowhere to become a summerlong obsession, building a genuine word-of-mouth phenomenon pivoted on its equidistant touchstones from the past and the future. Set in smalltown mid-americana, the writing/directing partnership of brothers Matt and Ross Duffer crafted something entirely their own from openly worn, beautifully deployed references to ’80s classics Poltergeist, Stand By Me, The Goonies, Aliens and Stephen King and Steven Spielberg. The soundtrack harked lovingly back to an analogue age. The title graphics became their own multiple memes. And in the strange, Et-like figure of Eleven – with her bleeding nose, mute presence, Vetements-ish oversized jacket and cream dress that you can currently have madeto-order (Etsy, £98) – the year was given its favoured Halloween get-up.
Winona Ryder finally made good on those comeback promises that have followed her for more than a decade.
Her Emmy must surely be a given? The Beetlejuice, Heathers and Edward
Scissorhands starlet played Joyce Byers, the mother of missing school kid Will, who disappears after a night of role-play gaming with his gang of pubescent chums. Joyce has white trash hair, a nervy tobacco habit and a crankily abusive ex-husband. In Hopper (David Harbour), the hot mess local sheriff, she has a potential love interest who sets his stall out early by drinking a beer and smoking a tab during his morning shower.
In a year of unique modern malaise and global men with messiah complexes encouraging their supporters to daub the landscape with dire acts of political vandalism, the recent past looked like a safe place to dwell. In these trying times, the odd, supernatural case of the missing schoolboy in Stranger Things felt both hot and cool, defining its times by taking a canny look over both shoulders.