From the premiere episode's father and son battling over their prisoner's fate, to a frankly mesmerizing midseason episode set entirely in an ill-fated diner, the show's characters are sketched with heartwarming hopes and heartbreaking fears. Though it's a fantastical story about a godlike mythical figure, reality-altering rubies and the grim reaper in a tank top, the core of The Sandman is the humanity of the people Morpheus encounters.
From the dream realm to Hell itself, the show's world(s) are so rich in detail that even the lesser characters sketch out a sense of an enigmatic larger universe, evoked by the merest scrap of dialogue or the briefest appearance. The story unfolds in a world of cell phones and gas stations and spit-and-sawdust taverns - mixed with an eyeless serial killer, foul-mouthed occult trouble-shooters and an actual, literal Lucifer.
The series intriguingly mixes the mundane with the mythical. He's the lord of dreams, and while he's locked up for the best part of the 20th century his kingdom falls into ruins, unleashing dreams and nightmares alike into the human world. And it's one of these who accidentally ends up locked in the occultist's basement: a skinny, fiercely cheekboned chap named Morpheus. This is a universe where abstract concepts - death, desire, despair - are embodied as stylishly dressed schemers squabbling with each other on assorted planes of reality. That isn't a metaphor: In this tale, there's an actual walking, talking figure who shuffles ill-fated humans off this mortal coil. 5, the series begins with a hubristic occultist trying to capture death. The original Sandman is such a multilayered and ambiguous story that every reader will have a unique relationship to it, and it'll be fascinating to see how each viewer responds to the TV version.Įither way, Netflix's 10-episode series (plus a surprise bonus 11th episode) is a delicious, dark, funny melding of myth and magic in the modern world, filled with seductive and destructive supernatural beings in a richly layered realm of fears and fantasies. If you've never read the comics, you're in for a treat as you come to the series unencumbered by your memories and vision of the original. If you like thinking about dreams, and stories, and you're into general ponderous musings about goth stuff, then hoo boy is The Sandman the show for you.Īs a long-gestating adaptation of a seminal comic book by Neil Gaiman, there's a huge weight of expectation among readers and fans, but the good news is this atmospheric and engaging series is the stuff that dreams are made of. They bubble up from our unconscious, often appearing the same - and yet, looking closer, you might find the details shift in every telling.
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