Stranger Things takes us back to simpler times. The original Netflix series plonked us in a fantasy past where kids in small American towns rode bikes, chewed gum, listened to cassettes and played Dungeons and Dragons in their friend’s basement; or, if you weren’t American, it reminded you of movies you’d seen where that was the vibe. Either way, it was access to an era before the internet, 9/11, the banking crash, the pandemic and Trump, when life seemed easier.

The cartoon spin-off Tales from ’85 does something similar for Stranger Things itself. It rewinds to a happy, straightforward time, namely between seasons two and three. In that moment, the world of Hawkins, Indiana had been established, but we were yet to endure the show’s bumpy late period, when it got long and boring, then supersized itself and became breathtakingly spectacular, then lost control of the monster it had created and became both spectacular and boring at the same time.

So now it’s January 1985 again. Mike, Dustin and Lucas (Luca Diaz, Braxton Quinney and Elisha Williams, respectively) have been reunited with their friend Will (Benjamin Plessala) after a monster captured him and took him to the Upside Down, the netherworld lurking beneath Hawkins. Cool girl Max (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) is in the gang, as is telekinetic foundling Eleven (Brooklyn Davey Norstedt), who has become the ward of heroic cop Jim Hopper (Brett Gipson) and whose mind powers are a closely guarded secret. Playboy-with-a-heart Steve (Jeremy Jordan) is yet to be converted to the wonders of nerdy demon-hunting, but he’s about to be drawn in, which means his love/hate bromance with Dustin is reset to the start. Following Eleven’s epic effort to close the gate to the Upside Down at the end of the main show’s second season, all is relatively quiet.

Tales from ’85 resists the temptation to employ an overly retro, Scooby-Doo style of animation, instead rendering its adventures in pretty standard modern CGI – but the content is 1980s comfort food all the way. Dustin is getting a high score on Space Invaders when his friends contact him on his walkie-talkie so he can ride with them to school along icy, wintry streets. Before long, the driver of a snowplough is shouting “Get outta the road! Stupid kids!” at them while We Got the Beat by the Go-Gos blares gloriously on the soundtrack. The departure of beloved science teacher Mr Clarke on a sabbatical is a concern, but his substitute, Mrs Baxter (Janeane Garofalo), seems nice enough, and who knows, perhaps her obsession with the theory of evolution is about to come in handy. There are Slim Jims to chew on and air hockey pucks to be smacked. We are home.

Of course, it is less than half an episode before glowing tentacles start emerging from snowdrifts and our pals are having to grab implements and hatch plans, but the new show’s threat stays nicely local and small-scale. Bolstered by the arrival of new kid Nikki (Odessa A’zion), a “freak” with a mohican and a flying jacket who slots easily into the group of plucky outcasts, they do battle with a series of increasingly fearsome creatures, using such classic techniques as luring the critter to the car park so it can be studied through binoculars, or rescuing a team member who has become trapped beneath the beast by hitting the ground with a shovel and shouting: “Hey! Over here!” Then, when oblivion finally looks certain, Eleven holds up her palm, stares furiously and does her mind-control thing, sending the monster flying.

That formula is used a few too many times in the early stages, as is the semi-dramatic aftermath in which a weakened, bloody-nosed Eleven is stopped from collapsing by a worried Mike, who tells everyone else off about pushing his girlfriend too far and threatens to squeal to Hopper, before relenting and diving back into battle when a new, even bigger lizardy triffid thing goes on a fresh rampage. It’s not helpful that the scripts are, predictably but not inevitably, not as funny as the parent show, so there’s nothing to offset the feeling of going round in circles. But eventually, the peril intensifies, the intrigue goes deeper – literally, when we resume exploring underground lairs – and the kids come up with a conspiracy theory about malevolent adults that doesn’t get bogged down in expansive geopolitics. It’s just about grownups with a bad scheme.

Not really going anywhere, however, is what we want from Tales from ’85, to cleanse the memory of Stranger Things having ended up far too far away from the innocent paradise it created. Future seasons could use a little more invention, but not too much: it would be cool to be stuck in 1985 in Hawkins, Indiana indefinitely.