‘The Sandman’ Review: Netflix’s Dark Fantasy Is a Dream Come True

Tales are like recurring desires. They bubble up from our unconscious, typically showing the identical — and but, wanting nearer, you would possibly discover the main points shift in each telling. If you happen to like fascinated with desires, and tales, and also you’re into normal ponderous musings about goth stuff, then hoo boy is The Sandman the present for you.

As a long-gestating adaptation of a seminal comedian e book by Neil Gaiman, there’s an enormous weight of expectation amongst readers and followers, however the excellent news is that this atmospheric and interesting collection is the stuff that desires are product of. If you happen to’ve by no means learn the comics, you are in for a deal with as you come to the collection unencumbered by your reminiscences and imaginative and prescient of the unique. If you happen to have learn the comics, nicely…. The authentic Sandman is such a multilayered and ambiguous story that each reader could have a novel relationship to it, and it will be fascinating to see how every viewer responds to the TV model.

Both manner, Netflix’s 10-episode collection is a scrumptious, darkish, humorous melding of fantasy and magic within the fashionable world, crammed with seductive and damaging supernatural beings in a richly layered realm of fears and fantasies.

Streaming from Aug. 5, 2022, the collection begins with a hubristic occultist attempting to seize demise. That is not a metaphor: On this story, there’s an precise strolling, speaking determine who shuffles ill-fated people off this mortal coil. It is a universe the place summary ideas — demise, need, despair — are embodied as stylishly dressed schemers squabbling with one another on assorted planes of actuality. And it is one among these who by accident finally ends up locked within the occultist’s basement: a thin, fiercely cheekboned chap named Morpheus. He is the lord of desires, and whereas he is locked up for one of the best a part of the twentieth century his kingdom falls into ruins, unleashing desires and nightmares alike into the human world.

The collection intriguingly mixes the mundane with the legendary. The story unfolds in a world of cell telephones and fuel stations and spit-and-sawdust taverns — combined with an eyeless serial killer, foul-mouthed occult trouble-shooters and an precise, literal Lucifer. From the dream realm to Hell itself, the present’s world(s) are so wealthy intimately that even the lesser characters sketch out a way of an enigmatic bigger universe, evoked by the merest scrap of dialogue or the briefest look.

Although it is a fantastical story a few godlike legendary determine, reality-altering rubies and Loss of life in a tank high, the core of The Sandman is the humanity of the individuals Morpheus encounters. From the premiere episode’s father and son battling over their prisoner’s destiny, to a frankly mesmerizing midseason episode set solely in an ill-fated diner, the present’s characters are sketched with heartwarming hopes and heartbreaking fears. 

It is irritating that the present’s creators felt the necessity to open the collection with a jarringly over-explanatory voiceover spelling out in eye-rolling element what might’ve been teased and revealed via the present. I am unable to assist however really feel the hand of a Netflix government in that call, but when it makes the collection extra accessible to new viewers, then I most likely should not quibble. The cliffhanger for the primary episode additionally suggests a standard sort of collection — the fantasy model of a procedural — however that present by no means materializes. As an alternative, every installment tells a comparatively self-contained story, and fragments of tales are woven right into a mesmeric patchwork. When a extra standard overarching storyline kicks in throughout the later episodes, Morpheus is considerably sidelined. However this extra conventional story does give the present’s dreamlike construction slightly ahead momentum, and likewise serves as a facade to smuggle in more and more and delightfully bizarre stuff.

The listlessly whispering Tom Sturridge has a tricky activity enjoying the lead position of Morpheus, who’s typically a mere observer of occasions and is mostly haughty, even merciless. However this fearsome determine can be enticingly susceptible and has partaking moments of humanity (as in an early episode, when he asks when he might have commanded). He additionally has a really good coat.

It is also a tricky job to play in opposition to such a weighty forged, all of whom sink their tooth into their multifaceted characters. There is not a weak hyperlink among the many forged, although Jenna Coleman and Patton Oswalt really feel a bit misplaced. Silky-voiced Boyd Holbrook leads the way in which as Morpheus’ nightmarish creation The Corinthian, a seductive and sybaritic southern gent who cannot cease chopping individuals’s eyes out. Then there’s David Thewlis, who follows his terrifying flip in Fargo’s third season with one more unnerving efficiency. Sport of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie is an imperious Lucifer, whereas Vanesu Samunyai is the human coronary heart of the later episodes. And among the many supernatural stars attacking their roles with relish regardless of sadly restricted display time are Kirby Howell-Baptiste as an affable Loss of life and Mason Alexander Park as purring, growling Want.

In some methods, adapting The Sandman is an not possible activity (or, I dunno, a Sisyphean labor, if we’re speaking the language of Gaiman and his creations). Operating from 1989 to 1996, the comedian was created by Gaiman with artists Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg (and plenty of others), and incessantly instructed its story by enjoying with the type of the comics medium. A few of that stuff is solely not possible to re-create on tv. So not every thing will work within the TV model, at the very least not for some readers who’ve deep relationships with the supply comics.

However tales are like recurring desires. The similar preoccupations, the identical fears, the identical wishes could regularly drive the identical dream into our helpless sleeping thoughts. But the main points could change — and extra importantly, we modify day-after-day, so the dream isn’t skilled the identical manner twice as we develop and study. I confess it has been years since I learn the comics, and I might expertise them completely otherwise now than I did as a callow youth. So a brand new adaptation of a beloved murals can be a unique factor, and we’re totally different as we expertise it.

What I am saying is, attempt to let go of the comics a bit whenever you watch the TV present, OK? 

For these new to The Sandman, your enjoyment will hinge on how you are feeling about ethereal philosophizing, Gaiman’s mixture of caprice with jet-black humor, or Stephen Fry. However, following on from the gleefully depraved American Gods and the cheerfully cosy Good Omens, this long-gestating adaptation of The Sandman looks like a becoming translation of Gaiman’s signature cocktail of unflinching humanity, atmospheric allusion, hilarious nastiness — and most of all an underlying sense of aching hope and pleasure. Maybe nothing might seize the magic of the enduring comedian, however set your love for the books apart, like a half-remembered dream. As a darkish and charming fantasy TV collection, The Sandman is a dream come true.