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.
Episode 2: “Imperfect Hosts”
I’ll be honest: for the first two episodes of the show, I was kind of afraid that The Sandman was going to suck. Episode 2 ditches the hand-holding of the premiere, but it’s a rather slow affair. We get some important information about the nature of Dream and the Dreaming, but not much happens.
Dream returns to the Dreaming after his imprisonment and finds it in ruins; his faithful librarian Lucien is one of the few dream folk to have stuck around to keep watch while he was away. Repairs must be made, but to do that, Dream will need a trio of tools that were taken from him while he was locked up: his pouch of sand, his helm and his magical ruby.
A large chunk of the episode is spent visiting Cain and Abel, the Biblical brothers who now live as neighbors in the Dreaming. Also they’re friends with a sentient gargoyle named Gregory; the Dreaming is just that kind of place. In a plot added for the show, Dream must reabsorb Gregory, who he created long ago, in order to get some of his power back. Only then can he call on the Fates, who can point him in the direction of his missing items.
You see the problem here? We know what Dream has to do pretty much from the start, but by the end he’s only just gotten to the starting point. The bit with Gregory seems especially odd; I suspect it was added as an excuse to introduce Cain and Abel, who will pop up from time to time throughout the story. The show does a decent job with their funny fratricide dynamic, to be fair. And it does a great job with the Fates, who are as mysterious and frightening as in the comic.
There were things I liked about this episode, I just wish it moved faster. Happily, the show was pretty much clear sailing for me from here on out.
Episode 3: “Dream a Little Dream of Me”
I know the point of this list is to order the episodes of The Sandman from worst to best, and that so far they’ve just been in the order in which you’re supposed to watch them. It’s a coincidence, I swear; the show definitely gets better as it goes along.
And this was the first episode of The Sandman I thought worked more or less from start to finish. It kind of reminds me of the premiere in that it introduces a new character — in this case paranormal detective Joanna Constantine — around whom much of the episode revolves. But in this case the show is confident enough to let the story play out naturally without forcing Dream in before he’s needed.
Instead, we get an amusing opener where Joanna Constantine officiates a secret royal wedding where the groom is possessed by a demon who bursts out of his mouth during the service. Wicked. From there, the selfish Joanna meets Dream, who has heard that she can lead him to his missing pouch of sand. The two play well off each other, with Joanna trying to ditch the nigh-omniscient Dream every chance she gets.
The episode is pretty low-stakes compared to some of Dream’s other adventures, but it builds sympathy for Joanna in a brief amount of time and humanizes Dream at the end when he grants her ex-girlfriend — who kept the sand and has been corrupted by it — a painless death in her sleep. Plus, the episode introduces Matthew, Dream’s new raven voiced with pluck and heart by Patton Oswalt. He will be a consistently funny presence throughout the show.
Okay, we’re going to break format now and jump ahead:
Episode 7: “A Doll’s House”
“A Doll’s House” kicks off the second story arc for The Sandman, and this one is a lot more internally coherent than Dream’s quest to get back his totems of power. There, every episode still felt like a little story onto itself, more or less. Here, we meet a new cast of characters who we’ll follow through to the end of the series.
There’s Rose Walker, the young woman looking for her missing brother Jed. There’s her friend Lyta Hall, a widow who’s traveling with her. There’s Unity Kinkaid, Rose’s surprise great-grandmother who was asleep for decades while Dream was imprisoned. And there’s a whole house of wacky housemates that Rose will be staying with during her search.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with “A Doll’s House”; it just has a lot of deck-stacking to do. Who are these people, what are they after, and where does Dream come in? As it happens, Rose is a dream vortex, a kind of once-in-a-generation phenomenon who has the power to tear down the walls between dreams, which could pose a danger to the Dreaming. The episode has to explain that too.
“A Doll’s House” is also setting up a plot with the Corinthian, a nightmare on the run from the Dreaming who has been running around for several episodes now. He’s a famous serial murderer who likes to eat the eyes of his victims. There are a bunch of other serial killers who are setting up a serial killer convention and want the Corinthian as their guest of honor. Their conversation in a diner hits the right mix of funny and creepy.
Episode 8: “Playing House”
We have another in-between episode as Rose begins to grasp what it means to be a dream vortex. The best scene of the episode involves her walking through the dreams of her housemates, some of which are quite surprising. I appreciate that the show leans into the weirdness of it all; I didn’t have confidence that we would get the strange spider-women, or that we’d see a glimpse of Barbie’s high fantasy life this early. I didn’t know if we’d see it at all, but it looks like The Sandman is committed to doing right by Gaiman’s work.
That said, there are changes. This episode involves Rose and Dream looking for Jed in the Dreaming, where he spends his time as a superhero called “the Sandman” who battles an array of colorful villains rather than face his waking life with his abusive foster parents. I found the scenes with the parents a tad melodramatic, but they were tense.
The main action goes down in Jed’s dreams, which are enabled by an escaped nightmare named Gault, who is taking over the role of Brute and Glob from the comics. They add in a new wrinkle where Gault is tired of being a nightmare and has dreams of making people happy, which Morpheus is not pleased with.
I don’t mind the change; frankly, this whole story was a little awkwardly put together in the comics, and it reads a little awkward here. Still solid, though. Onward:
Episode 10: “Lost Hearts”
The Sandman ends its first season by closing out the Doll’s House arc, and it gets the conclusion it deserves, which is to say that it’s stirring, imaginative, fun, and a bit messier than other arcs from later in the comics. The story is still getting its sea legs at this point.
The Corinthian dies in this episode after giving a pretty hilarious keynote speech at the cereal convention, so it’s as good a time as any for me to air some of my grievances about him. So the Corinthian is a famous character from The Sandman because he has rows of razor-sharp teeth where his eyes are supposed to be, which is why he’s always wearing sunglasses. I thought Boyd Holbrook played him ably, but I have no idea — no idea — why the show gave away the game so early; the Corinthian revealed his mouth eyes in the second episode, so when he whips off his glasses in the finale, it doesn’t have the impact it should. His death scene wasn’t bad, but that was a weird, weird choice by the producers.
After dispensing with the Corinthian, Dream turns his attention to Rose, who cannot control her powers as a dream vortex. It looks like he may have to kill her, but at the last second, Unity is able to take her place, sacrificing herself for the great-granddaughter she never knew. It’s a sweet twist, we get to see all of Rose’s housemates in their dream states again, and the show ends with a hint that Dream may be willing to soften and change his views on things. All in all, a very solid finale.
Oh, actually, the episode ends with a cliffhanger where Lucifer plots to get revenge against Dream. Can I have season 2 now, please?
Episode 9: “Collectors”
The cereal convention is one of the funniest ideas Gaiman came up with during his run on The Sandman. What if a bunch of serial killers got together and basically put on a Comic Con, complete with panels and workshops and cocktail mixers all hosted in a big hotel? It’s a wild, strange, disgusting notion that I thought might not translate to live-action…but it does, mostly. “Collectors” wrings a lot of comic juice out of the idea, although it’s appropriately creepy too. I’m thinking of the bit where the serial killer Fun Land gets wistful thinking about hunting kids at amusement parks. Am I supposed to laugh? Cry? Call the cops? I don’t know and I think that’s good.
The highlight is probably when Gilbert (Stephen Fry) is wandering through the con and popping his head into panels, which he expects to be about cereal but are about…other things. Fry is excellent in the role of yet another escaped resident of the Dreaming, in this case taking the form of an avuncular English gentleman.
Meanwhile, Rose — acting as the vortex — is unwittingly bringing down the walls between dreams, which leads to her friend Lyta’s dead husband managing to get her pregnant, both in the waking and the sleeping worlds. This is a weird storyline, and I don’t think the actors quite succeed in selling it, but we do get a great scene where Dream intervenes and “kills” Lyta’s husband…or unmakes him, or whatever, considering her wasn’t real in the first place. He also claims that Lyta’s unborn child belongs to him, since he was conceived in the Dreaming, which does not sit right with Rose. Because of her growing power, she poses a real threat to Dream.
This is another serialized episode that feels more like part of a longer story than something that can stand on its own, but I’m gonna give it the edge over the episodes surrounding it because of all it does right.
Episode 11: “Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope”
Imagine the delight of Sandman fans when they learned about this. Several days after the season dropped, Netflix revealed that it had made another episode: this one adapts two (mostly) stand-alone stories from the comics: “Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope.” No attempt is made to blur them into one story. They’re presented one after the other and they’re both really good.
They’re also both really different. “Dream of a Thousand Cats” is an animated story about housecats who dream of a world where they are apex predators who hunt humans like normal cats hunt mice. It’s eerie, ethereal and kind of cute. Aw, look at da kitties killing everyone, yes you do, yes you do feast on our flesh. Prrr.
“Calliope” is much more serious. It’s about an author who kidnaps and abuses one of the Greek muses in exchange for artistic inspiration. What are we humans willing to do to be successful? According to the episode, more than we’d like to think.
Dream features in both of these mini-episodes, but only on the margins. The world of The Sandman is strong enough to stand without him.
Episode 4: “A Hope in Hell”
One of the charms of The Sandman is how it freely jumps between tones and genres. The premiere is like supernatural Downton Abbey, the third episode becomes a detective show, and the fourth takes Dream to Hell, which is brought to life in spectacular fashion by the production designers and special effects artists.
Many artists have imagined what Hell looks like over the years, so there’s a lot to draw from. The Hell of The Sandman is all blasted landscapes and portentous red horizons, tall angry demons and twisty spiky palaces. It feels intimidating, and the script does a good job of establishing that not even a being as powerful as Dream is safe here, particularly once he meets Lucifer, played to the hilt with deadly sweetness by Game of Thrones veteran Gwendoline Christie. I’ve mentioned a few actors by name so far — Tom Sturridge, Patton Oswalt, Stephen Fry — because they deserve distinction for bringing something special and exciting to their characters. We can absolutely add Christie’s name to that list.
The whole reason Dream is going to Hell, by the way, is because a demon has taken his helm. To get it back, he must play a game of wits with Lucifer (in the comics he plays it with Choronzon, the demon in question, but I get why they wanted to highlight Lucifer instead). The fight is a visually sumptuous, wonderfully imaginative sequence, one of many in this episode.
“A Hope in Hell” is a treat, and it starts what is easily the season’s best run of episodes.
Episode 5: “24/7”
“24/7” is one of the best-known issues of The Sandman. It revolves around John Dee, who’s been knocking around for a few episodes but whom I haven’t really touched on yet. Played with skin-crawling banality by David Thewlis, he’s the son of Roderick Burgess, the occultist from the premiere, and Ethel Cripps, Burgess’ mistress. When Cripps became pregnant with John, Roderick wanted her to get an abortion. Rather than do that, she stole Dream’s totems of power from Roderick and split. Later, John got ahold of Dream’s ruby, modified it, and used it to terrorize people by forcing them to face their darkest dreams.
That’s a lot of setup for what is essentially a bottle episode. Almost the entirety of “24/7” takes place in a diner where John is stopping before conquering the world. The best thing about the episode is its restraint. “24/7” takes its time introducing us to every person in the diner, so we’re properly horrified when John starts tearing down the walls of their reality and forcing them to commit atrocities…or did John just take away their pretenses and let them act as they already wanted to? John sees it one way, Dream another.
The climax, where Dream confronts John and finally gets back his power, is probably the biggest fist pump moment of the season, and this after what is easily the most memorably horrific episode. But far from being satisfied to mine that vein, The Sandman shifts gears once again for its finest moment:
Episode 6: “The Sound of Her Wings”
This episode combines two stories from The Sandman comic: in the first, we meet Death, Dream’s older sister played with a perfect combination of approachabnility and intensity by Kirby Howell-Baptiste. In the second, we meet Hob Gadling, a mortal granted a reprieve by Death whom Dream meets in the same bar every hundred years to see how he’s doing.
The two stories mesh together very well because they’re both focused on showing us a different, softer side of Dream, deepening his character by miles. Because Dream is usually so reserved and shut off, it’s very moving to see him moved, whether by Death’s compassionate treatment of the people she helps or by Hob Gadling, who after centuries of hanging out with the inscrutable Dream demands an acknowledgement that they are, in fact, friends. I teared up multiple times this episode…and then again when I rewatched it. Don’t you judge me.
It’s episodes like this I think will hook people. It’s fun to be terrified during “24/7” or to soak up the lore from the Dolls’ House arc, but ultimately, people keep watching TV because they care about the characters, and “The Sound of Her Wings” makes me care.
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