DanThornton

Tech, Geekery, Pop Culture, Miscellaneous

The beauty of Tales from the Loop

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It’s possible that the temporal distortion of lockdown makes this the perfect time to experience the beauty of Tales from the Loop, the retro-futuristic TV series just recently released on Amazon Prime.

Based on the retro-futuristic art of Simon Stalenhag, it’s a combination of snowy retro Midwest and Scandinavian style with worn and semi-realistic glimpes of scifi. And it’s soundtracked elegantly by Phillip Glass and Paul Leonard-Morgan.

It reminded me a little of recently watching Alex Garland’s Devs (currently on BBC iPlayer), where a fictional city somewhat akin to San Francisco exuded a real inherent menace.

Except that Tales From The Loop feels little more like a live action Swedish style blog. Every single frame appears to have some notable element, whether it’s a random robot peering from behind a tree, an unusal chess set, or what appears to be the entire 1970s H&M range.

What made watching the first episode interesting is that under normal circumstances, I’d have been conscious of the relative lack of anything approaching an actual story.

There’s a plot, but it’s a pretty flimsy one. You could describe it as ephemeral, but it would also be lightweight for even the shortest of science fiction short stories.

Amazon actually acquired the rights to Stalenhag’s first art book, ‘Tales from the Loop’, which was set in 1990s Sweden, and with art accompanied by a novel-length written story. Which pulls together the images in a hazy way.

And usually that would drive me made with a television series. I don’t mind slow moving sci-fi, or ambiguity, but I generally need something to get me hooked in the first place. Obviously, Arrival is a well-known example of a brilliant film developing characters and stories at a fairly slow place compared to most films about aliens.

But I don’t know whether it’s down to the fact I’m already a big fan of Stalenhag’s art. Or the fact that I wanted to enjoy seeing wide open spaces covered in snow during a time when I’m locked down in a heat wave. But I ended up really enjoying just admiring the set design, the wardrobe, and the composition of the filming. Even if the hour of television contained less actual plot points than an IKEA advert.

So it’s more highly crafted moving art than a traditional television series. But Tales from the Loop is certainly worth experiencing, so you can make up your own mind…

Why Television and Radio Won’t Die

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Last night I started watching The Wolverine. Before you judge, let me state that it happened to be on Amazon Prime, and I’ve read, re-read and indeed re-purchased the Wolverine Graphic Novel after mistakenly lending it to people over the years.

It was late and I was weak.

In fact it was late enough that about half of the way through the film I decided to take a break and get some sleep. So when I stopped working to grab some lunch today, it seemed like a good time to finish the film off. Except that I couldn’t.

The process went something like this:

  • Go to Amazon Prime Video and search for Wolverine, as the main pages only want to show me new films/TV shows.
  • Click to view.
  • Wait ages.
  • Get a Silverlight error message.
  • Try again.
  • Get the same Silverlight error message.
  • Sigh deeply, then go to Settings, and select the Flash player.
  • Go back to Amazon Prime Video and get a Silverlight error message. Return to settings, and back to the video and then it loads in Flash.
  • Watch approximately 2-3 minutes of the film with 60 second intervals for it to buffer.
  • Go back to Settings, revert to Silverlight and spend a minute or two reading the Troubleshooting Guide.
  • Download the Silverlight Diagnostic Tool as recommended and watch as it fails to find the problem.
  • Restart Router. Restart PC.
  • Realise that I’ve finished my lunch and gone way over the time I’d planned to spend.
  • Cry a little inside.
  • Decide to give it one last try just to see what happens. Silverlight etc doesn’t have a problem, but in the process I seem to be watching the film from the beginning again
  • Cry a little more inside.

And this is exactly why broadcast television and radio won’t die.

Television

In order of problems viewing:

  • Amazon Instant Video – 1-2 problems per month
  • Virgin Media Digital Box – 1 problem every few months
  • Broadcast TV and Radio – I can remember 1 problem when someone stole cabling supplying one of the transmitters in Peterborough a few years ago.

But it’s not as simple as blaming Amazon, Netflix, Hulu or Youtube for a poor video experience.

Or Silverlight, Flash or HTML5.

Or Virgin, Sky, BT or other ISPs.

Or someone else in the house using a different device for gaming, streaming or downloading Wikipedia en masse.

Or all the neighbours deciding this is the exact time they all want to stream something as well.

Because the problem with internet television and radio is that it could be any part of the chain that causes an issue, and generally it’s down to the individual to figure it out.

The rationale is easy to understand – no service can provide effective troubleshooting for every individual combination of internet, viewing device and browser. But even as someone who has picked up reasonable technical knowledge over the years, it’s a massive pain in the arse.

Is it the software, the browser, the PC,  the wifi, the router, or the ISP? The diagnostics told me it was Silverlight, my observations were that my connections seemed to be running slowly, and restarting an entirely different piece of hardware fixed everything, and Silverlight runs fine again.

*facepalm*

Meanwhile I can turn on a television or radio in a matter of seconds and enjoy whatever is available with simplicity and reliability. And if there’s a problem viewing, it’s either:

  • The TV is broken. Replace.
  • The transmitter is broken.
  • The end of the world has begun.

I love streaming films, TV and music on-demand, and accessing shows and artists I’d have never discovered and spent money on. But it’s hard to defend something which takes a working knowledge of IT to operate.

It’s why I worry about Net Neutrality, and the horrific idea that the EU could be moving towards accepting a two-tier internet. Access to a decent broadband speed is an infrastructure required by everyone – without it you limit the ability of individuals and startups in favour of the dominant players being able to mask the fact their services are inefficient.

It’s why I worry about curbing the BBC as a free-to-air service which is able to share information, education and news to anyone regardless of their devices or ISP.

And it’s why a part of me worries every time Spotify unveils new features, or Amazon tries to deliver a new technological innovation. Because it means that there are less people working in the boring ‘Just make it work’ department.

Years ago, I would have happily predicted the imminent demise of print and broadcast media in favour of digital services. All this time later, and I’m still waiting for something approaching reliability to make it conceivable.

On the plus side, the original comics are still awesome. And still work perfectly 33 years after they were first released.