Finally, right? It took forever for Neil Gaiman’s beloved and bestselling comic book “The Sandman” to get adapted. For years, it looked like there would be a feature film based on the DC Comics smash hit. Way back in 2013, it was announced that David S. Goyer would adapt the series into a feature film to star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who would also produce. That project fell apart over the years, but Goyer remained attached, aligning with Gaiman and Allan Heinberg (“Wonder Woman”) on what is now a Netflix original series, premiering its 10-episode first season today, August 5.
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How do you adapt something as dreamlike as “The Sandman” into something as literal as a TV series? It always felt like a hurdle for any adaptation of the story of Dream to capture the surreal tone of the source material, one that mixed myth and magic together in a way that the blunter nature of television was sure to drain of its depth. Perhaps an ambitious creator could take Gaiman’s world and not merely try to replicate it but build on it. Sadly, that wasn’t meant to be.
The team behind “The Sandman” seem content to mimic more than creating something themselves. A slavish loyalty to a source as brilliant and beloved as “The Sandman” makes some sense, but it’s the difference between a project that expands on ideas and one that just repeats them. Almost everything worthwhile about Netflix’s “The Sandman” can be traced back to the strength of the source material, which makes it hard not just to recommend reading it again instead of adding another TV series to your schedule.
Tom Sturridge plays Dream, aka Morpheus, the king of the very concept of dreaming, who is captured in the series premiere by Sir Roderick Burgess (Charles Dance), who was seeking to imprison Dream’s sister Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) but nabbed the wrong target. For a century, Dream is held away from his kingdom and comes home to find it primarily destroyed, even though Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong) is still there awaiting his return. Dream heads out to basically fix what went wrong while he was away, and the hopes and fears of humanity were uncontrolled. His journey leads him to literal Hell, where he negotiates with Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie), and his return gets the attention of the sociopathic nightmare known as The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook), a God of the Serial Killers who drives the final narrative as Dream seeks Rose Walker (Kyo Ra), a young lady who has powers she doesn’t fully understand. Joely Richardson, Stephen Fry, John Cameron Mitchell, and more show up in minor roles, while the Gods of Voice Acting bless this show by casting Patton Oswalt as Matthew the Raven and Mark Hamill as Mervyn Pumpkinhead.
The first season of “The Sandman” adapts issues that were collected in “Preludes and Nocturnes” and “The Doll’s House,” choosing an admirable episodic structure to build this universe through the first six chapters and then telling a more direct narrative in the final four chapters of this first season. And so some of the most famous issues of “The Sandman” get focused treatment in a way that almost makes it feel like this show could be better appreciated in a weekly series format. For example, “24 Hours” gets its own nightmare bottle episode that’s designed to replicate the unforgettable sixth issue of the book, which is followed by “The Sound of Her Wings” (issue #8) and “Man of Good Fortune” (issue #13) being crammed together into two halves of one episode. And then the arc of “The Doll’s House” fills out the endgame.
Just these titles alone should have hardcore “Sandman” fans eager to see how some of the most famous comic book releases of all time have been treated, and the answer is quite literally. There are times when “The Sandman” reminded me of the already-canceled “Cowboy Bebop,” another live-action adaptation of an animated source that made the mistake of thinking that just transferring something from one medium to another would be all the creativity needed. There’s a bizarre belief that if people like something in one form, they’ll just like it again in another. And loyalty to the source is key to some fan’s enjoyment, but it’s hollow. It doesn’t last because a copy will never have the creative spirit of an original.
And it doesn’t help that the sense of actual danger often feels drained from these adaptations. Take “24 Hours.” John Dee aka Doctor Destiny (David Thewlis) has achieved a level of power that he should never have, able to manipulate the employees and customers at a 24-hour diner into living out their wildest dreams and nightmares. He basically exploits their darkest desires in a downright terrifying way on the page. When asked why he’s doing it, he simply says, “Because I can.” The sense that human emotion and need can be a plaything for a higher power leads to unforgettable storytelling.
On television, it feels more like a familiar experiment. There’s nothing overtly wrong with the TV version of “24 Hours,” and Thewlis is predictably great, but it has the familiarity of an episode of “The Twilight Zone” instead of what feels like a dark new vision. Maybe it was impossible to do the latter on television, but it doesn’t help “The Sandman” for so many of its best ideas to feel like echoes of a story that’s already been told. And it doesn’t help that the show seems surprisingly afraid to get truly grisly. This should be a very adult show in terms of violent visions, but it seems toned down to appeal to a wider audience like so much product in the Content Era tends to be.
So what does work about “The Sandman”? After some early season uncertainty, Sturridge settles into his role nicely. The truth is that Dream is often an observer, and Sturridge understands how to play straight man to crazy characters like Lucifer, Doctor Destiny, and the Corinthian. On that note, Holbrook is excellent at conveying the charismatic menace required for his character, as his the always-great Thewlis. There’s something fun about how “The Sandman” revolves around interesting character actors into its universe and then spits them out again, leading to a richer and richer world with each episode.
And, on that note, there’s a weird sense that a second season of “The Sandman” could fix most of the problems with the first. It wouldn’t be the first show to make the hardcore fans happy with direct loyalty and then take them in a new direction once it gets that vote of confidence. The craft elements here are strong—you can see the budget and Goyer’s skill set with massive scale—and the cast understood the assignment. It really feels like they’re up to the challenge of really expanding on Gaiman’s universe instead of hollowly replicating it. Will that happen? A TV critic can dream. [C+]