The Sandman Episode 1-6 (some spoilers)

I suppose it is a meta-spoiler for any fans of the comic book who are nervous about watching the Netflix adaptation that you need not worry. It is hard to see how this adaptation could be any better.

The casting is perfect. Sometimes it is obvious (Charles Dance, Stephen Fry, Patton Oswalt doing what they do) and sometimes obvious in retrospect (Jenna Coleman and David Thewlis are always watchable but are brilliant here) and sometimes the casting is the perfect use of less familiar faces (notably Tom Sturridge as Dream and Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death).

The adaptation updates and reworks the material but in ways that avoid reverence to the comic books while showing off what made them work. I’ve nearly finished the whole series, which adapts the first two story arcs (Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House) but there is a natural end at episode 6 and the show is really two shorter seasons (6+4) combined into one.

What I can’t answer is whether people unfamiliar with the original books will enjoy the series. I started reading The Sandman in the early 90’s in graphic novel format. I recall very distinctly buying Preludes and Nocturnes in a comic book shop near Covent Garden in London at a time in my life when I was somewhat adrift. My mother had died the previous month, I was living in an unfamiliar city without any good plans or direction. A weird story about an introverted god that was simultaneously nothing like Doctor Who and yet occupied that same space adjacent to horror and fantasy and weirdness and big ideas expressed in small ways was far too easy for me to become obsessed about.

Yet, I intentionally rationed myself. While I was buying as many of the individual issues of the Vertigo line of comics as I could afford, I decided to stick with only reading The Sandman in the trade paperback editions and then retroactively picking up the collections of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run and Jamie Delano’s Hellblazer.

In short, I am not unbiased and getting to re-enjoy The Sandman in a new format was a joy and also, I like to find the good things. I’d have enjoyed the adaptation even if it had been largely disappointing. My plan was to ration myself again and space out individual episodes but no, I binged my way through eight episodes on Friday and Saturday. I’ll stick here to the first 6 and post about the last 4 later in the week. Here’s a fold for spoilers.

Episode 1, “Sleep of the Just” plays out the premise of the first issue of Gaiman’s The Sandman. A god-like being known as the Lord of Dreams is captured by a rich occultist during World War I. There are two changes in the adaptation. Firstly, the idea of the Dreaming realm is shown overly in a big CGI sequence early on (with a few easter eggs for fans). The premise of Morpheus/Dream is stated overtly and it is easier to see what kind of thing he is narratively.

Morpheus as a comic book character framed as the kind of being who frames other stories. The Crypt-Keeper of the old EC horror comics or The Watcher of Marvel’s What If or, to take a step into television, Rod Serling introducing the Twilight Zone. The omniscient narrator given a shape, form and nominal personality. There are stretches in The Sandman comic books where Morpheus is little more than that, a figure who is there simply to let a story about a different set of characters happen.

However, Preludes and Nocturnes takes that idea and forces Morpheus to be a protagonist due to human meddling. The tension runs through Gaiman’s writing. Morpheus wants to be a framing device but is repeatedly, through self-destructive urges or human meddling, placed in the role of a central character. The guardian of stories forced, self-referentially, to be a story. Gaiman eventually reveals the Greek-tragedy aspect of this but that is further down the line.

The second change is that the character of The Corinthian is introduced from the start. Central to the later Doll’s House plot line, he is now included as a reason why Morpheus is visiting the waking world at all. It’s a good choice and makes for a tighter and more cohesive story. Retrospectively, the original comics were caught between being a kind of horror anthology and still being expected to fit into the wider DC superhero universe. Events now have The Corinthian acting against Dream to allow the escaped nightmare to continue to enjoy his freedom.

The Corinthian remains monstrous but his early appearance establishes a recurring theme. Morpheus is a demiurge, omniscient and omnipotent within his realm, a supernatural force of imagination/creation but with finite limits on wisdom and compassion. Morpheus is a bit of a self-indulgent arrogant shit and if The Corinthian is a monster it is only because of how Morpheus created him.

The story of Morpheus’s escape from his human prison and his attempts to repair the damage done after a century of absence continues in episode 2. We get the same wild tonal shifts from the comics with the introduction of Cane and Abel, as well as a sense of the range that The Sandman can take from heavy sentimentality to cruel humour and light comics-code-transgressing horror.

This takes us to Jenna Coleman and episode 3. As explained above, The Sandman was my introduction to the character of John Constantine, the dodgy, unethical quasi-punk-noir detective invented by Alan Moore as a foil for Swamp Thing and as a Sting-lookalike. Here, Constantine is updated as Johanna Constantine, blending in Gaiman’s historical ancestor for John with a version of the Delano Hellblazer character.

OK, my biases are now in overdrive as I am very much a fan of Jenna Coleman but I honestly think she completely captures and owns the character of the troubled but glib magician in a trench coat. What was already looking pretty good as a series, steps up several notches. Tom Sturridge as Morpheus still doesn’t have a lot to do other than look pensively pale but just about holds his own in the presence of more overly charismatic character. I absolutely loved one of the most subtlest easter eggs, where Constantine makes a crack about troublesome exes and Sturridge just does a downward look.

Episode 4 takes Morpheus (and his raven Matthew played by Patton Oswalt as Patton Oswalt if Patton Oswalt was a talking bird) to hell. Sturridge now has to play off against Gwendoline Christie as a charmingly angelic Lucifer and we also get to see more of how Morpheus is fundamentally neither good nor wise. That sequence plays out as per the comic but the strength of this episode is elsewhere.

David Thewlis had already been introduced as John Dee. In the comic books, he’s a failed super-villain and here he is the former owner of Morpheus’s stolen ruby. His escape from a psychiatric facility, aided by another magical item that makes him invulnerable, allows him to pursue his own quest to regain Morpheus ruby. Polite, doddering and vulnerable, dressed in pyjamas and a coat, Dee is aided by the kind intervention of Rosemary (Sarah Niles). The car journey with Rosemary and Dee is brilliantly horrific as Rosemary slowly comes to realise that who she assumed was a confused elderly man is a mass murderer. Hell and Lucifer pale in comparison to the interplay between David Thewlis and Sarah Niles discussing truth and honesty.

Thewlis takes centre stage in episode 5 24/7 i.e. the issue where John Dee takes control of a diner with the power of the magical ruby. It was a shocking story originally but perhaps has lost some of its impact now. Even so, not easy watching and Thewlis improves upon the original comic book version with a thoroughly convincing performance of Dee as genuinely believing that he is being kind and benevolent while he messes with the minds of the poor souls trapped in the diner. Again, some great performances by actors playing the other characters also.

By this point in the graphic novel collection, Gaiman’s voice and conception of the series still wasn’t clear. It was a buffet of elements some contrived, some cutesy, some horrific. It was the final story that I think cemented Gaiman’s reputation and made people into fans of the series.

In the adaptation, episode 6 is actually two distinct stories but both fan favourites. The first, and the title for the episode, “The Sound of Her Wings” introduces Dream’s sister Death. In the comics she is famously a cheery goth chick. When the casting for the series was announced there was the inevitable backlash when a black actor Kirby Howell-Baptiste was given the role of Death. It’s not racist, pleaded some fans, to object because Death is meant to be literally white, as in not ethnically white but specifically that colour. Aside from Kirby Howell-Baptiste playing Death pitch-perfectly in this episode, updating the look of the character (she still wears the Ankh medallion) was a smart move.

As the series (in both forms) progresses, Morpheus’s siblings are each introduced and they all have very distinct looks. However, in the first outing of Death in the comics, she is clearly intended to look similar to Morpheus, as if black hair, white skin and dressed for a Cure concert were a family trait. Kirby Howell-Baptiste broadens the gap between the two siblings but also is absolutely convincing as Tom Sturridge’s older sister.

OK, “The Sound of Her Wings” made me cry when I read it and the first half of the TV episode made me cry again. It is sentimental and superficial in many ways and also very lovely and funny. The befuddled realisation of each of the people Death meets is brilliantly done. The big stars in the show are all very good but I want to give a round of applause to every side character as well.

The second half, jumps to a later Sandman story in which we plunge back in time to another outing by Dream and Death. This time they visit an inn in medieval England. There they encounter the boastful Hob Gadling who drunkenly claims that he intends to not die on the grounds that death is just something everybody does as if by habit. This sets up a series of meetings at the same inn/pub between Hob and Morpheus after Death essentially grants Hob’s wish. Hob never dies and every hundred years he and Morpheus meet to see if he is sick of living.

Although, this mid-season semi-finale centres on Death and then Hob, it also gives Tom Sturridge some room to settle into Morpheus as a more rounded character. It’s a difficult role but Sturridge pulls it off. Death is important here in part because she emphasises that Dream’s manner of speech and portentous statements are a matter of choice on his part. He isn’t really like that because he is a god-like being. His more mature (yet equally endless) older sister speaks like a normal person and yet is the far more fearsome embodiment of death and dying.

Throughout The Sandman, Gaiman keeps returning to this theme about whether things are capable of change and the extent to which we are how we are created to be or whether we are more than that. In the comics, this was often both progressive and horribly dated and clumsy. It is interesting to see how Gaiman is approaching this with a new version of the same story.

The Sound of Her Wings starts to lay out the thesis of The Sandman. Morpheus is the literal embodiment of the idea of dreaming and imagination. He is an essence. Gaiman raises the question of whether something that is undeniably an essence can change and grow or become better. As John Dee explains to the waitress/aspiring novelist in the diner, every story if carried on long enough must end in death.

Anyway, I liked it.