GAIMAN'S THE SANDMAN ON NETFLIX NOW

The ethereal Tom Sturridge is The Sandman on Netflix.

British author Neil Gaiman is one of the most recognizable names in science fiction and fantasy today, with a plethora of books, plays, short stories and graphic novels to his credit. He began his run in 2008 by becoming the first author to win both the Newbery and Carnegie medals for the same book (The Graveyard Book) and continued with the Book of the Year from the British Book Awards in 2013 for The Ocean at the End of the Lane. He’s won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Bram Stoker award as well. And, if that weren’t all, he’s done well-recognized work in light-hearted SF/F television series (Lucifer, Doctor Who, Good Omens).

Speculation and anticipation ran rampant for years that a project was in the works to adapt Gaiman’s popular DC Comics graphic novel series, The Sandman. In 2019, Netflix acquired the property in a massive deal with Warner Brothers, which owns the DC universe. Given the world-building requirements of the mind-blowing fantasy, The Sandman took a while to bring into being. But August 5, we all saw the result of years of written adaptation, careful diversified casting and gorgeous art production and computer- generated imagery when the 11-episode show debuted on Netflix.

I have to admit I’m a “Sandman newbie,” never having had time to read the original graphic novels. But Gaiman has said the show is aimed at an audience more like me than Sandman superfans. He and his other creative collaborators, David S. Goyer (DARK CITY, DARK KNIGHT, BATMAN BEGINS) and Allan Heinberg (WONDER WOMAN), wanted to make sure the series and its many characters were accessible to viewers who tuned in out of curiosity, not just long-time readers of the comics. And they succeeded. I was instantly hooked by the characters and fell deeply into the world of The Sandman.

I was seldom confused or lost by the narrative, but it helps to know some Greek mythology (which comes up a lot in the show), a bit of the Bible, and a lot about supernatural arcana a la Sam and Dean Winchester. Yes, The Sandman has its own stable of beings with superpowers—not only Dream/Morpheus/The Sandman himself (an otherworldly Tom Sturridge) and his siblings Death (the beautiful Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Desire (a nonbinary Mason Alexander Park), Despair (a bedraggled Donna Preston) and the rest. But also Dream’s creations—Nightmares like The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) who takes his victims eyes, or Gault (Ann Ogbomo), who wants to stop haunting her humans’ dreams. There are also those who serve in Dream’s Realm—the Librarian, Lucienne, who takes over when he’s not around and serves as his conscience (Vivienne Acheampong), and Matthew the Raven (voiced by Patton Oswald), who serves as his eyes and ears in the waking world.

We first meet Dream in the series when an evil student of the occult, Sir Roderick Burgess (played by veteran actor Charles Dance), calls him forth in a ceremony really meant to capture Death. (Burgess has lost a son in WWI and wants him back.) When he recognizes his error, he takes Dream’s objects of power (his bag of sand, his helmet and a ruby amulet), the only one of which Burgess can use being the ruby, which makes dreams come true. But Burgess keeps insisting he wants immortality and won’t let Dream go until he gets it. Dream, in the meantime, says and does nothing. For a hundred years.

Dream’s captivity has all sorts of consequences—in the waking world, where thousands of people fall into a kind of coma called the “sleepy sickness” and don’t wake up, and in the Dreaming, his own Realm, where Nightmares escape to wreak havoc and the Realm itself begins to crumble. The objects of power, the ruby in particular, fall into the wrong hands and cause their own kind of chaos in the waking world until Dream can escape his captivity and recover them.

The first half of the show—roughly five episodes—busies itself with Dream’s quest to find his objects of power and undo some of the damage done during his time away from the Dreaming. This is based on the first volume of the graphic novels in The Sandman series, Preludes and Nocturnes. Volume Two in the series, The Dollhouse, provides the storyline for the last half of the show, minus the bonus episode at the end of the first season (more about that later).

As Dream returns to his Realm with his objects of power and begins the rebuilding of his Realm, some problems are left behind unresolved. Three Nightmares still roam the waking world: Gault, Fiddlers’ Green (played by Stephen Fry) and The Corinthian. Dream will have to corral these three and return them to their proper place in his Realm.

And a new problem has arisen, the development of a Dream Vortex, a powerful human that disrupts dreams and has the potential to collapse the waking and Dreaming worlds in on themselves. This being takes the form of a young woman, Rose Walker (Vanesu Samunyai), with a complicated backstory, a tragic childhood and a separation from her younger brother, Jed (Eddie Karanja). This serves to introduce a host of other colorful characters and send us on yet another quest to find Jed. The quest ends up at a serial murderers’ convention, of all places, where The Corinthian is the honored guest. The Corinthian is using Jed as bait, but it turns out he is the one caught as Dream finds him at last, Rose and Jed are reunited, and everyone discovers the Dream Vortex is not who we thought she was after all.

Most of this plot moves along at a steady pace, if not a blistering one. There are some unnecessary detours along the way as we meander through several characters’ dreams, which I assume are there to satisfy fans of the graphic novels. I gather from reading the reviews that quite a few characters from the novels were left out. I didn’t miss them, and, as you can tell from this review, there are more than enough characters already. But I assume there would be plenty of material for another season. Netflix has yet to make a determination on that score.

Finally, a word about Episode 11, the so-called bonus episode, which is comprised of two separate stories, “Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope.” The first is an animated story about a Siamese who is on a mission to restore the natural order of feline dominance over humans by rousing her fellow cats to dream a different reality. But have you ever tried to get a bunch of cats to cooperate?

The second story concerns two successive authors (Derek Jacobi and Arthur Darvill) who bind the muse Calliope (Melissanthe Mahut) to their will, keeping her captive for years so she will inspire them to write for fame and fortune. It takes the intervention of her former lover Dream to free her. This little tale has the tone of an episode of The Twilight Zone, with the desperation (and cruelty) of the writers turned back on them in typical Serling fashion.

Yet it’s difficult to see the connection of this bonus episode to the rest of the show, despite the presence of Dream in both. There is certainly no sequential connection to the plot. The Sandman doesn’t appear to be an anthology series, though it could have been set up that way. So this episode (and a couple of others, like “The Sound of Her Wings” and “24/7”) stick out as oddities. If the show gets a second season, which it deserves, seems to me the concept needs some clarification.

Cheers,

Donna