Stranger Things — power hair and Ryder’s return

IT’S a modern mystery. Glorious sunshine is beaming down on London but the parks and beer gardens are conspiciously not as full as usual. The reason for this curious exodus? A force stronger than the summer weather is at work, namely the lure of a suspense-filled Netflix series called Stranger Things. Here’s what we know about it so far. The story begins in Eighties Indiana. Will Byers, aged 12, is cycling home after a game of Dungeons and Dragons when he takes a shortcut past a top-secret government facility. He doesn’t make it home. His mother, Joyce, takes his disappearance badly.

The police start working to find him and at the same time a mysterious girl with supernatural powers appears — could she be connected to Byers going missing? His friends also start a search mission, trying to find Will before a more insidious force takes hold. Each episode is 50 minutes and there are eight of them, so the kids don’t have long to save the day. The Duffer brothers have form. They wrote episodes of Wayward Pines and the 2015 thriller film Hidden. Their inspirations include Steven Spielberg, Stephen King and John Carpenter, and they tested their idea by cutting a fake trailer using clips from more than 25 films. A group of boys who live in the suburbs cycle off on an adventure (The Goonies meets E T) and find a girl with special powers. Meanwhile, there is a sheriff investigating a missing child (Twin Peaks)... Current preoccupations such as government conspiracies, using technology to monitor people and bullies with power are all addressed. This is a dark drama, and no one’s fate is secure.