Tom Sturridge as Dream in episode 104 of The Sandman. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022
If you’ve ever been a massive fan of a book that’s been turned into a movie or a TV show, then you know the worst part of the adaptation cycle is endlessly wondering how different that adaptation is gonna be from its source material. And for something as beloved as Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, that fear is only compacted by how long it’s taken the comics to be adapted. But Netflix’s adaptation of The Sandman successfully navigates that tight-rope walk between faithfulness to the source material and a willingness to make necessary changes. It always sounds like a bunch of PR spin when someone says an adaptation is a love letter to the source material, but it’s genuinely true for Netflix’s The Sandman. While there are definitely things about The Sandman that don’t work as well as they could, it’s hard to imagine an adaptation much better than this one.
Spoiler Alert: This review focuses more on how Netflix’s The Sandman compares to Gaiman’s original comics. As such, there are spoilers ahead. For a more general, spoiler-free take, please read my colleague, Tia Fabi’s, review.
A Love Letter to the Comics
Netflix’s The Sandman is about as faithful an adaptation as you could reasonably expect, given how un-TV shaped the comics were. If you’ve read the first two volumes of the comic (Preludes & Nocturnes and The Doll’s House), then you know what to expect. In 1916, an amateur magician accidentally captures Morpheus (Tom Sturridge), the personification of dreams. And after a century of captivity, Morpheus escapes and sets out on a quest to recover his missing tools. His quest takes him from Johanna Constantine’s (Jenna Coleman) London to the depths of Lucifer’s (Gwendoline Christie) Hell to a confrontation with John Dee (David Thewlis), a madman with a surprising connection to Morhpeus’ captor. Meanwhile, an escaped nightmare called The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) desperately tries to keep Morpheus from regaining his power. And a Dream Vortex threatens the very existence of Morpheus’s realm, the Dreaming.
As a fan of the comics, I can’t overstate how magical it is to see this world come to life so beautifully. Everyone is perfectly cast, from the biggest names (Sturridge’s Morpheus, Gwendoline Christie’s Lucifer, Mason Alexander Park’s Desire, Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s Death) all the way to the briefest of supporting characters. And the visuals are beyond breathtaking. Many shots are ripped directly from the comics, with entire panels recreated shockingly faithfully. And somehow, the show manages to retain the comic’s dream-like essence in the storytelling, gradually floating from one story strand to another. More than anything, the show just feels like The Sandman. It’s every bit as magical, whimsical, dark, and mysterious as the comics are. That being said, the show does make some changes. However, those changes never stray that far from the comics.
Let’s Talk About the Changes
The show hits all of the most important story beats – though often in unexpected ways. Some events are shuffled around, usually to reshape the narrative to better fit a TV series. Other events are changed to either remove elements that didn’t age as well (like toning down some of the darkest parts of “24 Hours” and the Cereal Convention) or to remove references to the wider DC Universe. But Allan Heinberg, Gaiman, David S. Goyer, and the rest of the writing team take steps to ensure that these changes never stray too far from the comics. For example, Hector (Lloyd Everitt) and Lyta Hall’s (Razane Jammal) storyline is radically different in the show while still hitting the same beats as the comic’s version. Honestly, the vast majority of the show’s changes are so small that I doubt most people will catch all of them. I’m certain I didn’t.
That being said, though, there are a few fairly major changes, too. The vast majority of them work very well – in large part because those changes lead to fuller explorations of the characters. You see this most in the way the show expands on Lucienne’s (Vivienne Acheampong) relationship with Morpheus and with her job and in the way the show dives deeper into Rose’s (Vanesu Samunyai) connection to the Dreaming and the influence she has over the realm. There are definitely some character arcs that could’ve used an even greater focus, though. In particular, the show could’ve dived a bit deeper into Desire (Mason Alexander Park) and Despair’s (Donna Preston) ongoing involvement in Morpheus’ woes – especially in light of how important those characters are to later storylines. But that’s a very minor issue when the show’s doing as much as this first season does.
A Season Comprised of Two Disconnected Storylines
The bigger issue is that the season tries to combine two wholly separate storylines into a single season of a television show. To be fair, it does work reasonably well, all things considered. But the problem is that those storylines share very little connective tissue. To solve this problem, the show takes some elements of The Doll’s House storyline and introduces them during the season’s earlier episodes. Mostly, this takes the shape of the Corinthian popping up from time to time, influencing characters like Roderick Burgess (Charles Dance), John Dee, and Rose Walker into doing whatever they can to keep Morpheus from regaining his powers and uncreating the Corinthian. On the surface, that’s not a bad way of combining the two storylines. And it comes very close to working reasonably well, too, especially in the first couple of episodes. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t really go far enough with that idea.
The Corinthian doesn’t make much of an impact until the later episodes, where his scenes hew closer to the source material. To be fair, the show was never going to be able to go far enough. Having the Corinthian play too big of a role early on runs the risk of him overshadowing those other characters – something that would certainly earn the ire of diehard Sandman fans. So, it’s understandable that the show tries to avoid that. But on the flip side, the way the show uses the Corinthian in those earlier episodes is very uneven – especially between episodes 2 and 7. And, as a result, the show never really solves the problem it was trying to solve and still ends up feeling like one of those old network TV shows that would split their seasons into two distinct halves.
An Overall Excellent TV Series
On the whole, though, The Sandman largely succeeds anyway. Even on a structural level, Heinberg, Gaiman, and Goyer introduce enough season-spanning character arcs that while you definitely notice the show struggling to connect the two major storylines, you’re more than willing to overlook those obvious seams because the show very successfully explores those ongoing character arcs. The big hook for the season is seeing Morpheus’ evolution from the cold, uncaring entity he starts the series as to the more compassionate being he ends the season as. It’s an arc that lasts throughout the entire run of the original comics, and one the show explores very well – especially through his relationships with Lucienne and Matthew the Raven (Patton Oswalt). And overall, it’s probably the part of the show that works the best.
For me, the highlights of the season are easily episodes three and six. Episode three, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” makes great use of Jenna Coleman’s Johanna Constantine. The storyline is incredibly similar to John Constantine’s story in the comics – but with a lot of extra depth. It’s just a fantastic episode of television. Jenna Coleman is perfectly cast as Constantine and makes a great case for getting her own spinoff. And then there’s episode six. “The Sound of Her Wings” was always one of those stories that showed just how magical The Sandman comics could be, and the episode does exactly the same thing for the Netflix series. Kirby Howell-Baptiste is brilliant as Death. And the way the episode ties in Hob Gadling’s (Ferdinand Kingsley) story from “Men of Good Fortune” makes for a truly gorgeous hour of television. It’s hard to get much better than that.
Final Thoughts
Despite a few structural problems, Netflix’s The Sandman is an incredibly faithful, well-made TV series that’s sure to please fans old and new alike. From the great performances to the breathtaking visuals to the delightfully new spins on familiar stories, The Sandman is just a lot of fun. In a way, this first season reminds me a lot of the first season of American Gods – in a good way though! It’s similar to the source material in many ways while also unafraid to explore new avenues in service of making the best TV show possible. And hopefully, as the show progresses, the writers remain unafraid to follow those new avenues wherever they might lead. And given how superbly season one’s cliffhanger sets up the “Season of Mists” storyline, I can’t wait to see how the show tackles one of the comic’s best storylines in season two.
Season 1 of The Sandman is available now exclusively on Netflix.