Highly anticipated and in the making for several years, Netflix’s The Sandman is a little disappointing.


Netflix’s The Sandman is an adaptation of the comic of the same name by Neil Gaiman. It follows the story of Dream of the Endless aka King of Dreams aka Lord Morpheus aka The Sandman as he begrudgingly walks around dealing with problems caused by “mortals” and sometimes, his rogue nightmares.


The first episode is off to a great start as it shows Lord Morpheus (played by Tom Sturridge) as he journeys to the waking world to retrieve a rogue nightmare only to get caught and imprisoned for a century by an amateur mage who sought to imprison Death and bargain the reanimation of his dead son.

The pilot is an interesting premise except that this is not the entire plot of the series. It is in fact, one story which has other stories haphazardly patched onto it.

Netflix’s The Sandman adapts the first 16 issues of the comic book into one season so quite a few stories had to be compressed. The result is a cluster of stories that is almost jarring to experience as the show hurriedly hops from one story to another leaving nothing but the confusion of viewers in its wake.




The main character and the only constant in the series who should be our anchor does a very poor job of it. Lord Morpheus is an absolutely shoddy protagonist. He seems to have no convictions, aspirations or even thoughts of his own - every dully delivered speech sounds like he’s reading from a set of rules engraved at the side of an old forgotten mountain. He is neither captivating nor inspiring.


Perhaps Netflix’s The Sandman may have benefitted from being treated more like an anthology series - with each episode focusing on a single story instead of the failed parkour that was Season 1 episode 6. Or perhaps not.


While The Dream dully delivers the consequences of rule-breaking, the real consequences are never really conveyed and each character (and the damage they cause) seem to be contained in their own little pockets of the waking World. Dream tells us and everybody else that there were consequences for him being imprisoned for a hundred years but we barely see these consequences except in two very minute ways - the decay of The Dreaming and the subsequent escape of nightmares; and the very long sleep of one character - Unity Kincaid (played by Sandra James-Gordon).


The supposed human consequence of the imprisonment of The Sandman is the long sleep and eventual death of 1 million sleepers (barely 0.5% of the world's population). This consequence is barely etched in our memories as it's hardly given time to breathe in one of Lord Morpheous' dull narrations. What were the consequences of the entire world being unable to dream? What damage was caused by the release of hundreds of nightmares into the world? We see their damage bill only in form of Corinthian - who by the way, escaped pre-Dream’s imprisonment.


The villain of the series, Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) is a barely formed image - we are given no explanation as to why he walks around gouging and eating the eyes of young, blonde, gay men. Why is he doing this? What are his motivations or is he just bad because he is bad? Corinthian is a gorgeously wasted opportunity for the audience to root for somebody, anybody - even the villain. But as is the modus operandi of Netflix’s The Sandman, no screen time is dedicated to understanding the aspirations of any characters. They are, simply because they are.




All hurdles placed in front of Dream are fixed in the snap of a finger - the search for Dream’s tools, the battle of words with Lucifer, the fight with the big bad and pajama-clad John Dee. The pace with which The Sandman races through each obstacle leads us to believe that there will be an insurmountable threat at the end but even that is quite easily dealt with by the sacrifice of a recently found great-grandmother. The world-destroying entity and also the climax of the first season -  the “Vortex” would supposedly bring an end to the waking world but only ends up affecting the dreams of her 4 or 5 patched together friends - dreams they don't seem to remember or simply fail to address when they wake up.



Verdict: With no real stakes and a barely inspiring protagonist and antagonist, there’s really no way to get emotionally invested in this story as we are tugged along on a very hurried tour with a tour guide who delivers highlights in a dull monotonous tone.

5/10


On the plus side, the show stays mostly faithful to the comics and retains the beloved goth mood.


The Sandman is currently streaming on Netflix.