The Sandman, the epic fantasy series on Netflix, is overwrought and under-written poppycock
The Television Critics Association, of which I am a long-standing member, handed out its annual awards on the weekend. Roughly 200 people who write about TV made a list and voted. The top winner, with five nominations and four wins, including Program of the Year, wasIt won because it’s fresh, funny, a little weird and has a lot of heart. Made as a mockumentary, it features the teachers at a very underfunded Philadelphia primary school.
Sleep is the gist of the whole thing. There’s this fella, who introduces himself with, “For I am the King of Dreams. And nightmares.” Right, well, by the end of the first episode he’s moseying around like a member of the band the Cure circa 1988. But rather than delivering a catchy tune, poor chap Morpheus is still droning about dreams.See, the misfortunate fella went out on an errand and got caught accidentally by a rich and eccentric magician who was hoping to bring the dead back to life.
What’s happening, you know, is the step-by-step creation of the fantasy world that Neil Gaiman brought into being, using a smorgasbord of ancient mythologies and Jungian psychology. Morpheus, sometimes just called Dream, is the lord of our collective unconscious. There are others who try to control humanity’s hopes and dreams, including Desire and Death .
Anyway, the upshot is that Morpheus, after being freed, wants his stuff back: “My sand, my helm, my ruby,” he declares. This is the stuff that makes him powerful, but they were pilfered when he was in that cage. Other people, or creatures, want them too, of course. And so the alleged adventure spins on and on. Will he get his stuff back? Your clue to the meaning of it all is in our glum hero’s statement: “Dreams rarely survive in the waking world.
Well, we knew that. Based on this adaptation, it is hard to figure out the attraction of the material. It’s meant to be a fantasy series for adults, but it seems childlike in its depiction of epic themes. The visuals are dark, occasionally stunning, and yet you wonder what is the point of it all. Netflix has done an unusual thing with the opening episode.
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