The secret ingredient of Stranger Things is brilliant casting

At a number of different points in Netflix’s Stranger Things, a fantastic new drama that builds upon a nostalgia for 1980s science fiction films, the viewer is asked, for one reason or another, to suspend their disbelief. Why does Wynona Rider’s distraught mother character own so many desk lamps? How does a supernaturally gifted 11-year-old devour five double-sized boxes of Eggos in a single afternoon? There is one thing that the show never asks of its viewers, though, and that&rsquo