I have never read The Sandman graphic novels, despite their beloved status in the eyes of many a sensitive friend with toes in the goth/geek/arty subcultures of the 1990s.
In fact, I haven’t really read much Neil Gaiman at all, come to think of it. A friend gave me The Graveyard Book, aimed more at children apparently, which was probably a good entry point into his oeuvre. It was fine, something about Jack Frost from memory, but that memory is obviously not great as I had to do a Wikipedia search to recall the title.
I’ve seen the Stardust film, and the first three or four episodes of the American Gods TV show, as part of a recap attempt that floundered as I lost interest (despite a good early showing of nudity, too! Very surprised it failed to keep my notoriously pervy brain engaged). I also enjoyed his episode of Doctor Who, the one where the TARDIS came to life as a lady.
And that’s about it.
I’m telling you this because I’m going to attempt to watch The Sandman series and do a quick recap of each episode, and I want everybody to be clear on my lack of Gaiman groundwork going in. I have not read much about the series itself, or any other reviews or recaps so far.
I know the main character is called Dream; I know he is one of “The Endless”, gods with names all starting with the letter “D” who govern various aspects of the human condition; I know he’s a bit of a goth dude whose appearance may or may not have been based on Robert Smith from The Cure (I could be making that up).
So I am not sure whether this series will be best enjoyed by people who’ve read the source material, whether those people will be put off by comparisons to the original, or whether total newbies will find enough there to get hooked.
But with House of the Dragon bearing down on us like Drogon on that Lannister loot train in Series 7, I thought giving my recapping muscles a stretch with some quickfire practice would be a good idea.
So let us enter the realm of The Sandman, King of Dreams, and see if we can’t catch ourselves a decent bit of fantasy.
The first thing I have to say after watching Episode 1 “The Sleep of the Just” is that THE GOOD LORD GIVES US TYWIN LANNISTER, AND THE GOOD LORD TAKES HIM AWAY.
Crushed, I was, when our dearest of fiercest faces Charles Dance turned up as the baddie right away, only to buy it with a crack on the skull by the end.
He was so great as a toffee-nosed amateur occultist leading some sort of Eyes Wide Shut-style nudie cult in the English countryside (Wych Cross was the name of his manor, I see what they did there), storming around the place styling himself as “Magus” like a low-rent Aleister Crowley.
But he had an urgency to his dramatic flouncing - grief. It was also the reason Dr Hathaway from the British Museum (a gone-too-soon cameo by the great Scotsman Bill Paterson) had turned up for a visit: both men had recently lost vibrant young sons to The Great War.
Ahhh, so good to see Charles Dance once again being a dissatisfied and rather cranky father. Tywin Lannister, of course, just took over running the show when his children were too busy screwing up for Westeros at an Olympic level; by contrast, Roderick the “Magus” decides to use Hathaway’s spooky book, called the “Grimoire”, to raise the Dead.
Well, not quite the dead, but “Death” himself. Or herself. Not entirely sure if Death uses pronouns. Death themself? Death itself? Oh no, have I cancelled myself?
Magus is pretty confident he can use the incantations in the book to do this, although it’s never mentioned what language they’re in, whether the Grimoire has an easily accessible Google Translate version, or why they needed to perform the ritual in what appeared to be shiny teal-blue Snuggies.
It’s called FASHION.
No time for questions though, as it turns out the spirit of the magic works, but not the letter of the magic, and the Nudie Cult discover Dream slumped in their sacred circle instead of Death.
Dream is of course our Main Character Eyeliner King, but the Nudie Cult doesn’t know that yet. Magus Tywin demands the return of his dead son, then steals Dream’s precious bag of sand, a ruby, and his Salvador Dali-esque gas mask headpiece. He also… gulp… takes his fancy black robe, leaving his pale body exposed on the stone altar.
Dream is skinny. He is SKINNNAAAYYYY. You can see the vertebrae in his back. His stomach is concave. His thighs are the size of my forearms. I know acting is all about skinny people but wowsers. This is definitely early career Robert Smith, not more recent, fuller-figured Robert Smith.
“And I’m hungry like the wooooooolf”
Dream also has a perfectly waxed or possibly pomaded spiky hairdo and very plush pink lips. I’m guessing Mac Please Me, or Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow? Nars Schiap seems too fuschia, and Charlotte Tilbury’s Pillow Talk too muted. I’ll keep working on it.
Anyway, Dream is none too happy about being trapped in the basement of the discount Knights Templar, even if their name is the *snort* Order of Ancient Mysteries. I’m sure this title worked perfectly well in the graphic novels, but as a newcomer, it sounds like something the batshit crazy writing team behind Riverdale would slap together.
But does he fight for his freedom? No, he merely sits, and stares, in silence. He will continue to do this for the bulk of the episode.
World Staring-In-The-Nude Contest Champion
It’s here I should probably mention two other characters who seem important: one is a weirdly bland sunglasses-wearing dude whom I believe is called “The Corinthian”, but I only know that because I had the subtitles on and it was put onscreen at one point.
He is a Rogue Nightmare, which is not just a cool band name, but what happens when one of Dream’s creations escapes from The Land of Nod and goes haywire in humanity’s waking hour.
Dream, you see, controls everything to do with our unconscious lives. He has a big fancy Dream Palace with a Dream Gargoyle on the front and a big Dream Bridge held up by Dream Hands, with a Dream Assistant named Lucienne and a whole bunch of Dream Animals including Jessamy, his Dream Raven.
But occasionally he has to leave Dream World to go bounty hunting for nutbag nightmares that decide they’d rather not turn into sand again when their victim wakes up. He was in the middle of dusting this Corinthian bloke when Magus Tywin conducted his dodgy ceremony and sucked him into his circle jerk.
Now the scariest dream I’ve ever had - and this is a 100% true story - involved my parents forcing me to marry Michael Jackson at the Imax cinema at DreamWorld (omg, DreamWorld!) on the Gold Coast. I was in my teens when I had this night terror, and I woke up sobbing, so distraught that my loving parents would do that to me.
It was so out of character for them. My Mum gives me bundles of $5 notes to buy food for the foster kittens and my Dad literally dropped a quiche around today. These are not people who would force anyone to marry Michael Jackson, even before Neverland and The Unpleasantness.
Obviously in the world of The Sandman, Dream created this nocturnal experience for me, to… teach me a lesson? Just for funsies? I mean, what the hell, Dream? What does compulsory theme park nuptials with a suspicious pop star have to do with anything? What possible meaning could you find in that literal and metaphysical nightmare?
My confused adolescence aside, The Corinthian turns up at Wych Cross (This Cross!) to explain to Magus Tywin exactly what he’s trapped in his basement, how to keep Dream there, and a warning to never let him loose or he will kill everyone. It’s all very convenient for new viewers like me, just explains it all straight away. For a mysterious, other-wordly creature, Dream’s weaknesses seem to have been laid out pretty easily.
The Corinthian is very happy for Dream to stay cellar-bound, as he can get on with the business of what seems to be murdering people and cutting out their eyes, to look like him, because he has no eyes..
If you don’t have eyes, how do you see your soul? Huh?
And look, fair. Whomst amongst us would not choose a life of unbridled, consequence-free murder if we could get away with it?
Just me?
Ha, ha, see that was a test, and WE ALL PASSED.
*cough*
The other character we should discuss is Alex, Magus Tywin’s other son, or not, I’m not sure. Tywin’s dead wife… I mean Magus’ dead son Randall is the one he’s obsessed with, so Alex is not much more than a whipping boy while Magus grieves and yearns for his proper, talented son back. There’s a point here, no doubt, about how grief can trap you into obsessing about the past and your loss, and keep you from focusing on the living. I mean, Alex could have made a decent Nudie Cult leader, the same way Tyrion could have made an almighty Lannister heir had Tywin not despised him for his small stature. Come on, Charles Dance, give all your kids a fair go.
Alex is about eight or ten years old when Dream is captured; the action skips forward ten years to 1926, when a late teens/early 20s Alex is basically still a staff member in his father’s eyes.
By the time Roddie seems to be running Gatsby parties at the mansion every night, with Alex left to check coats and tell people to rack off when the club is at capacity. He helps a feisty blonde named Ethel gain entry to see the Magus; she seems to move straight in and eventually gets knocked up with a Magus baby.
Meanwhile Alex has always been perplexed by the Underground Goth his Dad rants at every day demanding wealth, boobies and immortality. Dream is guarded non-stop by a team of coked-up watchmen, but Alex manages to get down there one day and offer to let Dream go if he’d just slip Magus Tywin SOMETHING. You’re with a Lannister, dude, pay some debts.
But Magus Tywin catches him, and as punishment forces him to find Dream’s pesky raven Jessamy and shoot it. Apparently the astute avine has been evading Tywin’s gun for a decade.
But in possibly the greatest sequence of the episode, the crafty birdie figures out how to light one of Magus’ matches, set the living room on fire and fly into the basement to start slamming itself into Dream’s glass sphere cage in an attempt to break him free. It was honestly a little-heartbreaking to see this teeny CGI bird hammer its beak into the thick glass… while a pink-lipped Dream looked on with increasing hope.
And
Then
BOOM.
The bird exploded, leaving features and red goo all over the sphere.
Alex had shot the bird. It was both dark and darkly hilarious.
You’d think Tywin Magus would be a little more grateful, but he mostly just fussed about while Alex scooped up the poor creature, refusing to ditch it in a bin, but taking Jessamy instead to who knows where.
Things take a turn when Tywin Magus discovers Ethel, his bit on the side who is more a sketch of a character than a fully animated one at this point, is up the duff. He’s not keen for the pregnancy to continue, as Ethel tearfully tells Alex. But instead of accepting the baby daddy’s desire to call a doctor, she nicks off with the baby on board - as well as all of Dream’s fancy things.
It’s not explained exactly how she got them. I would have thought Ol’ Roddie would have been a bit paranoid about keeping them under lock and key, but maybe he was too cocky and left them lying around the place.
Either way, he decides to use their theft as a bargaining chip with Lord Skinny Man of Nakedness in the Glass Orb, offering to let him out if he’ll go after Ethel to get back his stuff, but leave him alone.
Frustrated, he repeatedly belts the Orb with a crowbar, demanding Dream at least speak to him. Alex tries to intervene, but Tywin reminds him that Jaime, sorry Randall, is the only son he had worth anything. Alex responds with “He’d hate you as much as I do!” and pushes his father back, and while it’s not quite a crossbow on the shitter, it’s enough of a crack to the skull to doom Charles Dance once more.
So Roderick “Magus” Burgess died exactly 35 minutes into this episode. That’s all we got! 35 minutes of steely-eyed glares and perfectly enunciated Charles Dance Magic Dance.
I’m outraged, but Alex doesn’t seem to be. There’s a moment immediately after Magus’ death when he and Dream seemed to reach for an understanding by reaching their hands to one another, but it’s broken by the coked-up security guards and Alex decides he needs to think.
Dream then rejects Alex’s formal offer of release because he doesn’t trust the man who shot his birdie, which is fair enough, but it means Alex doesn’t ever again consider releasing The Endless in his basement.
In the unspecified future, which one would assume to be the 70s or 80s, we see Alex confronting Dream, saying “At least I didn’t ask for wealth, boobies, and immortality like my father did”, which is not so much missing the point as rendering all points flat surfaces.
But it’s Alex’s sweet companion Paul who seems to draw a line in the sand, literally scraping Alex’s wheelchair across the “binding circle” that’s kept Dream contained for the best part of a century.
Dream realises something has changed, and is able to infiltrate the beach holiday daydream of one of the rent-a-bouncer security guards on duty. He spins some confusing head magic that makes the guard fire his gun at the Orb, shattering the glass and releasing Dream’s physical form. The Sandman is back, baby!
Dream is then able to turn into a black cat for some reason, and lure Alex to a throne in his attic, from which he dispenses rough justice: to be haunted by dreams and nightmares in unending slumber. Not death, slumber. No mattter how loud Paul cries, Alex won’t wake up.
It tracks what's been unfolding around the world while Dream has been imprisoned. The episode is interspersed with scenes of people unable to wake up, or unable to fall asleep. Because he is not there to dish out the dreams, nightmares, the falling-asleeps and waking-ups,, squillions of regular Earth residents are falling victim to sleeping sicknesses.
It would be terrifying if it wasn’t already kinda my life post-lockdowns. I have such poor sleep hygiene, I find it impossible to both get to sleep and wake up from sleep, which makes this recap nothing short of a miracle, thank you very much.
But we end with The Corinthian realising he needs to vamoose because now Dream is back, he’s going to go all Boba Fett on his ass; and Dream finally getting his ass covered once more, this time with undergarments as well as his sweet long black jacket.
Our Lord and Saviour Goth returns to his Dream Palace in Dream World, not to be married to Michael Jackson thankfully, but to see only his faithful right hand woman Lucienne remains. Every other dream and nightmare appears to have buggered off, and his palace is a hot mess.
“I made this world once,” he tells Lucienne, “I will make it again.”
Big promises from the Limber King of Unconscious Tinder.
I have to admit, this episode did not leave me automatically begging for more. As mentioned at the start of this piece, I don’t have the backstory and ingrained love of the source material to make me an automatic “next episode” clicker; and while the visuals were excellent and the acting fine, I was left a tad… underwhelmed, perhaps?... by this debut 55 minutes of television.
I will also say the delivery of this episode *felt* like a graphic novel. There’s a definite emphasis on visuals, and nobody speaks in sentences longer than would fit in a speech bubble. I mean, almost all of Sandman’s own lines are done in voiceover mode, which I could see coming from those explanatory rectangular boxes of text that you get in graphic novels.
This isn’t inherently a *bad* thing, just a *some* thing, something that clicked about three-quarters of the way through. I haven’t quite decided whether I like it or not.
Still, let us not forget it took me four episodes to realise I was obsessed with Game of Thrones. More recently, I was kind of sass-watching Shetland because Douglas Henshall was terrible in that abominable late 2000s show Primeval and I figured this would probably be a pretty crappy police procedural which would allow me to hate on him more, and the next thing you know I’m stalking locations on Google Maps and wondering how the brooding Jimmy Perez gets around with only his jacket collar up for protection against the harsh Gulf Stream winds.
Seriously, this is the only jacket the guy ever wears. Not a waterproof, or a windbreaker, or a ski jacket, or even a beanie and scarf. How does he do it?
So that coupled with my desire to do this quick recap series (yes, I know, this one has been long, but I have to set the scene, kittens) will hopefully reel me in further.
Mr Sandman, bring me a dream!
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