Excited for Netflix's The Electric State? Then you need to watch this underrated TV show based on the same art

(Image credit: Netflix)

One of Netflix's biggest upcoming releases is the movie The Electric State, which releases on Friday, March 14.

Based on the art of Simon Stålenhag (particularly a graphic novel of the same name) and starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown, The Electric State is set in an alternate 1990s in which robots are exiled to a desert after a failed uprising. We follow a girl searching for her long-lost brother in this dangerous zone.

The surprisingly star-studded cast also includes Stanley Tucci, Giancarlo Esposito, Ke Huy Quan and Jason Alexander, with Anthony Mackie, Woody Harrelson, Alan Tudyk, Jenny Slate and Brian Cox also providing voices.

While The Electric State seems to be your standard sci-fi action movie, promotional images (like the one above) show a movie that bears some resemblance to Stålenhag's art. The Swedish artist has become very popular over the years for his artwork and publications, which depict a retro-futurist world where robots and humans live together.

The Electric State is not the first adaptation of Stålenhag's work, though — one of Amazon's first Prime Video sci-fi series was actually based on another work called "Tales from the Loop".

The resulting TV show, also called Tales from the Loop, is still available to watch on Prime Video, and I'd really recommend it for sci-fi fans.

The semi-anthology series is set in an Ohio town that houses an experimental physics lab called the Loop, and each episode looks at different inhabitants of the town who are affected by the mysterious research done within. Jonathan Pryce, Rebecca Hall and Paul Schneider lead the cast.

By all accounts, Tales from the Loop has a fantastic tone. The look of the show is incredibly faithful to Stålenhag's art, resulting in it receiving some Primetime Emmy nominations, and the score from Philip Glass is perhaps his best screen work since The Truman Show's famous score.

Sadly, Tales from the Loop wasn't watched very widely, resulting in it being slightly forgotten by sci-fi fans and never receiving the follow-up that some fans hoped for. However given how abstract and atmospheric the Stålenhag source material is, it's arguably a better adaptation of the work than The Electric State (judging by that movie's action-packed trailers).

You can be your own judge though: if you're interested, the graphic novels of "The Electric State" and "Tales From the Loop" are both on Amazon. Make sure you get the book versions though, as while there are audiobook and audio CD versions, you'll obviously miss out all the illustrations this way.