Stars of the new Amazon Prime TV series Paper Girls are appreciative of comparisons between their show and the runaway Netflix hit Stranger Things.
Both stories are set in the 1980s and fit snugly into the sci-fi genre. They are also heavily influenced by Stephen King’s acclaimed short story The Body and focus on the perspectives of adolescent protagonists.
According to ComicBook, Fina Strazza (KJ Brandman) welcomed the comparison while contrasting it with some aspects of what makes Paper Girls unique.
“I think we are honored to be associated with shows like that and we could only hope for the same feedback, but what our show is doing is highlighting a story that hasn’t been told and it has its own unique tone to it when you’re watching.”
Strazza underscored that Paper Girls doesn’t shy away from difficult discussions about how some groups of people were regularly subjected to painful experiences of discrimination in a variety of ways.
“We’re all already aware of the intense hatred that clawed over the ’80s. But I think it became much more apparent to the four of us because we don’t focus on just the patterns on the clothing or the fun hair or the great music. We talk about the sexism and the racism and the homophobia and how a lot of people were not allowed to fit in and it was a very enlightening experience for us. Hopefully that will be enlightening for other people who are familiar with ’80s media because people tend to romanticize it a lot, so I hope that shines through.”
Paper Girls is the film adaptation of the eponymous comic written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang. It tells the story of four newspaper delivery girls in an Ohio suburb who get caught up in an interdimensional clash between rival groups of enigmatic time travelers.
The show received a perfect score of one hundred from Rotten Tomatoes, and our review found Paper Dolls to be exquisitely binge-worthy television.
Season one of Paper Girls is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.