The Sandman is here! Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s seminal comic book has arrived on the service, and it’s the kind of show that should please fans and newcomers alike. The show does a lot right: it sticks close to the source material, even when the source material is off-the-wall weird; it nails the casting, with Tom Sturridge doing an especially good job in the lead role of Dream; and Netflix spent a mint on it, meaning all those dream-scapes Gaiman thought up are brought to life in gorgeous detail.
At the same time, the show isn’t perfect, or at least not so perfect that I can’t find plenty of things to complain about. Let’s take a look at each episode and see if we can rank them from (relatively) worst to (objectively) best, starting with…
Episode 1: “Sleep of the Just”
The Sandman is a complicated show. It revolves around Dream, who is *deep breath* one of several eternal beings who represent different aspects of the human conditions. Dream presides over the Dreaming, the place where we all go when we fall asleep. His big sister Death escorts people on to their final resting place, their sibling Desire controls what people want, and so on.
So we’ve got a heady concept with a fair bit of lore behind it. The actual plots are equally odd. In any given episode, Dream might be going to Hell, stopping a disturbed murderer from torturing people in a diner, hanging out in the park feeding pigeons, and so on. The tone shifts wildly from story to story, which is part of its charm. But it can make it hard to sell to newbies.
I get that, so I understand why the producers felt this premiere episode needed a prologue explaining who Dream is and a voiceover narration to help us understand what’s happening…but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. In fact, I thought it robbed the premiere of a lot of ambiance.
The first episode follows an Aleister Crowley-esque Occultist named Roderick Burgess who performs a ritual in an attempt to capture Death and achieve immortality…but ends up nabbing her little brother Dream instead. In the comic, Dream basically doesn’t talk for this entire stretch of story; the suspense over who he is and what he can do builds until he finally escapes his imprisonment and reveals himself in all his terror and majesty. In this episode, he’s introduced sauntering through the streets tracking down an escaped nightmare and interrupts the tale every few minutes to tell us what’s happening.
Again, I get why the producers felt the need to tell the story this way, but I think it was the wrong choice. I would have much preferred to be put firmly into the shoes of Roderick Burgess (and later his son Alex) and experience this mystery for myself, rather than having my hand held. It’s a pretty lackluster way to kick off the series.