USA TODAY International Edition
Strangest thing: ’80s ardor just keeps growing
Series are looking back fondly, and here’s the formula
Television is partying like it’s 1989. Or 1983. Or pretty much any time in the ’80s.
More than a dozen current and upcoming series are set in the decade of Ronald Reagan and shoulder pads, a time when actual music videos played on MTV.
There are plenty of reasons for that, and nostalgia tops the list. Many writers and producers came of age in that decade, as did many fortysomethings still in the prized young-adult demographic.
“Every generation looks back at another era nostalgically,” says Jason Mittell, a professor of film and media at Middlebury College in Vermont. “There are so many moments in Stranger Things, GLOW, Halt and Catch Fire where it’s just a sense of seeing an outfit, like legwarmers, or hearing a Pat Benatar song that creates a connection.”
It’s easier to comment on contentious current issues from a show set in another era, as M*A*S*H did, and more shows, thanks to cable and streaming services, are doing so now.
Some shows, such as Netflix’s Stranger Things and Amazon’s Red Oaks, reflect entertainment of the time, too, Mittell says.
“For Stranger Things, one of the big appeals is that it’s evocative of ’80s film. It’s more likely the Millennial audience would have seen E.T. and The Goonies rather than necessarily remembering the ’80s,” he says.
Eighties shows appear to fit into categories, including: WARM NOSTALGIA
The Goldbergs (ABC, Sept. 27, 8 ET/PT) a family comedy, mixes trends and events across the decade under the umbrella of “1980-something.”
Netflix’s two Wet Hot American Summer seasons, First Day of Camp (set in 1981) and Ten Years Later (set in 1991), reboot the 2001 film that took its own nostalgic look at summer camp in the ’80s.
Red Oaks, set at a New Jersey country club in 1985, evokes such memorable ’80s films as Caddyshack and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. REAL PEOPLE AND EVENTS Netflix’s Narcos, which tracked drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in its first two seasons, opened in 1979 and spanned the ’80s. Its third season (Sept. 1) moves into the early 1990s and focuses on the Cali cartel.
NBC’s Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders (Sept. 26, 10 ET/PT) explores the trials of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were ultimately convicted of the 1989 murders of their parents. COLD WAR CHILL FX’s The Americans, which returns in 2018 for its final season, charts 1980s superpower tensions from the perspective of covert Soviet spies living in Reagan’s America.
Germany’s Deutschland 83, which followed an East German operative in West Germany, returns next year on SundanceTV as Deutschland 86.
Channing Tatum and his producing partners created their own 1980s Romanian cop series, Amazon’s Comrade Detective (available now), with Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and other actors dubbing the propagandaheavy show in English.