Decades after it was first proposed, Neil Gaiman’s ‘unfilmable’ comic book series has been adapted for the screen. Great things take time, writes Sam Brooks.

There are two kinds of people who are going to watch The Sandman. 

The first kind are people who scroll past it on their Netflix carousel, see that it’s in the top ten, and decide to give it a go. They might’ve heard of the comics, and even its writer, Neil Gaiman, but don’t have much of an inkling of the series’ tremendous legacy over more than three decades, and how beloved it is to those who have read it.

The second kind are the fans who have wanted to see this series on screen since it first came out in 1989. The Sandman has been in Hollywood development hell nearly since its debut, and many have called it “unfilmable”. At some point, plans shifted: it was decided The Sandman would be a TV series, not a film. Then, finally, Netflix picked it up. Fans were elated, but as with many things that nerds (sorry, but it’s true) love, there was plenty of trepidation.

Would it work on screen after all these years? What would they change? What would they keep the same? Nobody expected it to be as good as the comic book series, but would it be any good at all?

They needn’t have worried. Against all odds, The Sandman isn’t just good – it’s great. It’s also very much an adaptation, not simply the comic books pasted onto a screen. That might make purists baulk – god knows, some of the worst people on the internet were up in arms about the diverse casting choices – but what we’ve got is a version of The Sandman that feels comfortably updated to 2022 without losing an ounce of its wit, inventiveness or flair. 

For the uninitiated, The Sandman is a neo-noir fantasy, revolving largely around Dream (Tom Sturridge, looking like the haunted singer of an emo band), the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. The series starts with him being accidentally summoned from his realm, The Dreaming, and held prisoner for over a century in the real world, before escaping. His goal? Revenge, with a little bit of realm maintenance on the side. The world is a hodgepodge of classical and contemporary mythology, drawing as much on Greek lore as it does say, Christianity.

It’s a credit to the adaptation that this isn’t as remotely confusing as it sounds. Details of the world, and the rules that govern it, are rolled out as needed (and sometimes unnecessarily emphasised, but I’ll allow it) and when the series hits its stride in episode three, the audience is already hooked.

The surety of The Sandman is what gets it over the line. This isn’t a series that is trying to figure out what it is. The makers, including Gaiman himself and David S. Goyer, who has been involved in the project for nearly a decade, know what they need to do, they just have to achieve it.

A strong cast helps a lot in this regard: Sturridge and David Thewlis are the closest things the series has to regulars and both do grand, vivid work. The deep bench includes Gwendoline Christie, Kirby Howell-Baptitse, Stephen Fry, Mason Alexander Park and a terrifying Boyd Holbrook. All are doing great work and seemed to be having a great time with it (which matters more than you think it might). Genuinely terrific and inventive CGI, drawing from the imagery of the comics, and a confident visual style don’t exactly hurt either. 

What’s most impressive is what the creators have managed to change while staying true to the spirit of the comics. There’s the obvious casting choices, including more people of colour and non-binary actors in roles that weren’t written as such, but also the subtle reimagining of certain elements. A serial killer convention, already a darkly comic moment in the 90s original, hits different in the midst of a true crime boom. It’s a reminder that if the spirit of the original is honoured, a few renovations or tweaks for context never really hurt.

The most unusual thing about The Sandman, other than its obtuse premise, is how the series is structured. This first season is essentially split in two, the first half covering Dream’s revenge, and the second half fixing what has gone wrong since his imprisonment. Within these halves, the episodes tend to stand alone. Characters like Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s Death and Gwendoline Christie’s Lucifer pop up for one episode and then are gone the next. It’s a structure that mirrors, in a quite satisfying way, that of comic books: characters have arcs, they don’t just hang out in the background when they’re not the focus. It’s also a structure that works best in a streaming format, where an audience can choose whether they binge a show, or watch over a series of days or weeks.

However, this slightly scattered approach means The Sandman isn’t especially consistent. The fifth episode, which closes the first half, is a bottle episode revolving around characters we haven’t seen before having their inhibitions lowered bit by bit, thanks to some villainy and magic, until bloody chaos ensues. It’s the strongest single episode of the series, paying off several hours of setup, and closing that first arc satisfyingly. But it creates a jolt when the series lurches into the second arc, with only a few characters carrying over and a whole new set of them to invest in. The back half of the season might be stronger overall, but the shift initially jars – why can’t the show always as good as that fifth episode?

Ultimately, what often saves The Sandman from its occasional lack of coherency is that it’s really damn cool. Does the metaphor battle between Dream and Lucifer in episode four make a whole lot of sense? Absolutely not, but it throws everything at the wall anyway. There’s the incredible CGI and committed performances from both Sturridge and Christie (giving her best Tilda Swinton impression) as they deliver their silly metaphors with maximum gravitas. It’s a piece of television that will be as enjoyable to a diehard fan as someone who only clicked play to see what all the fuss was about.

The first season closes with a clear hint, and hopefully a clearer plan, for a second one. Let’s hope that Netflix gives it one, and this isn’t just a passing dream in a sleepy August. We’re unlikely to get another Sandman this assured, and definitely not this good, ever again.

The Sandman is available to watch now on Netflix.