The Sandman (TV Series)

Two shows in a row that were deemed unfilmable. Both have spent years, decades even, in various development hells and both have turned out to be very satisfying series. That said, where I described Foundation as sometimes hard to penetrate and requiring of attentive watching, The Sandman was a visual feast and every episode was a storytelling treat so I simply never wanted to take my eyes off the screen. It the difference between not daring to look away (although I was always sufficiently engaged this wasn’t an issue) and not wanting to look away.

The differences run deeper than that. Foundation was based on a book while The Sandman is based on mature comics (later graphic novels and then book-length collections). That makes Foundation feel like a 10-hour movie, with a consistent, on-going story, split into sections. There’s absolutely noting wrong with that and while it’s not the only way we see these 10-episode streaming series if you look back at Stranger Things, First Kill and the like, it’s pretty common. Episodes may have some internal structure, a cliffhanger to encourage you to binge into the next episode, a resolution from the previous cliffhanger and so on, but they’re long movies with lots of acts. The Sandman very distinctly isn’t this. The first five episodes are clearly an arc but they’re tonally very different, and in one of the episodes we hardly see Morpheus at all. This didn’t come as a shock to me because I know the source material well but I’ve seen some reviews from people who don’t and they were “like WTF?” before mostly saying it’s an amazing episode. Episode Six is really a stand-alone and starts to introduce us to the rest of the Endless, we spend time with Death and meet Desire. Then we move into final arc. This “structure” feels very British: there are through lines that, if you’re paying attention or know the material, are more than clear enough (I can’t say if you’d catch it from casual viewing) but you could drop into a lot of these episodes and pick up enough to understand what’s going on there and then to just watch it. That, of course, is a function of the source material where people might wonder into a comic book store, see a Dave McKean cover and grab it to read. A lot of British TV still does this. (I assume US network TV does but I haven’t watched any in so long I just don’t know.) Netflix doesn’t really - why bother when people sign up and binge? But it works really nicely here, at least for me.

The original material was transgressive, not only with the super androgynous Desire but in a lot of ways, some subtle (or transgressing British cultural norms), some really in your face. Presenting Death as the cute girl that comes and takes you by the hand to usher you into the afterlife with a smile, sympathy, empathy and friendly world had a huge impact on my world view at 24 that has continued for the next 30+ years. And it did so much more across the whole world of comics in so many ways: telling serious, adult stories, doing literature in comic book form for, really, the first time (it predates Maus and while others will disagree I don’t count Watchmen in the same vein, important though it was in other ways - Watchmen finished just before The Sandman started but was more of a satire on both superheroes and current politics in my view). The TV shows continues that transgressive nature, both on the source material and in the ways society’s norms today are crying out to be transgressed - it’s colour blind, gender blind and so queer it makes me cry thinking about how much society has changed both that we can have this and that we still need it. It makes my heart sing watching it though. (The only change I have the slightest quibble with is Death and that’s not fair on the actor. I was more than a little bit in love with the cute Goth girl original and anyone that isn’t her I’d have issues with. I think Kirby Howell-Baptiste portrays her brilliantly, she’s just not that cute Goth that still holds a special place in my heart and expecting her to be judged against that is unreasonable.)

Some of the dips into darkness are, thankfully, lightened just a little. I’m not going to say where, but if you know what happens early on, that episode hits hard still, it just doesn’t go into every dark recess of the human mind that the original explored - phew. I can do without that on screen, thanks. That is not the only change we see, the collectors get a bit more screen time so they get a smoother build up. The Corinthian gets a lot more screen time too. He tends to act (he’s not the only one, but a consistent one) as a source of exposition which is an interesting choice given what some of us know about him, but it’s a good tool given you can’t really have text panels doing your exposition in a TV show the way you can in a comic. All that said, the series is definitely telling the same story and telling it beautifully. Having Neil Gaiman as a core part of the writing team and having him not precious about the changes required to tell it in the new medium seem to have been a real positive here. (They were for A Discovery of Witches too but it’s not always the case.) I guess it’s really rare to have a creative in any medium revisit an opus 30+ years later and rework it. Let alone have one look at such an important body of work and use their additional knowledge and experience after 30 more years of storytelling, screenwriting and the source material to rework the material and give it an extra shine and polish.

The Brits watching will love some of the casting that the Americans don’t spot. I know I enjoyed watching the various members of the Kumar’s at Number 42 in their various roles for example, and there were many other little moments like this. There are a million little Easter eggs buried too. In the first Johanna Constantine episode, there’s a scene that’s a pretty direct lift from Hellblazer which serves as a great introduction for her character. There’s also a poster for the Mucous Membranes, the band for that the original John Constantine was the lead singer.

Can’t wait for season two. There’d better be a season two!

Bechdel Test: Fail. Most of the episodes pass but episode one has a lot of boys talking to each other. Fail.

Ko Test: Pass. This is borderline in a few episodes, particularly episode one. But between Lucienne, Death, Alice, the Fates and various others it’s a pass.

Russo Test: Pass. There are queer characters everywhere you turn. Not all of them pass all the steps in the test in fairness - they’re not important characters and could easily be straight and of the opposite gender without changing the plot - but many are, and it matters. For some they go the extra mile - Johanna Constantine is a gender-swapped version of John Constantine who is canonically bi, and although it’s a tiny, throwaway line in the middle of a list of exes in a conversation with her ex-gf, one is distinctly male (some are gender ambiguous) so they’re keeping her queerness defined as bi. Really, the test breaks in a show like this, where the assumption is almost “everyone is queer” rather than “is anyone queer” and so not everyone gets to be an important queer character but that’s OK.