'Dead Boy Detectives' Is a Surreal, If Overstuffed, Supernatural Procedural in the 'Sandman' Universe

I tore through Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series as a junior in high school. I fell in love with the infinite, sprawling world(s) it waltzed across as much as I did with the stories it told. It’s exhilarating to visit a place where the primordial, fairy-tale-esque logic makes it feel like anything can happen. Within that wild and wooly world, we meet Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland, a pair of ghost boys who appear during one of Dream’s adventures. Edwin and Charles went on to appear in other Vertigo comics events and crossovers, with a special release in 2001 called Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives. The characters were also adapted in the Doom Patrol series on Max. Though initially developed for Max, Dead Boy Detectives the series eventually landed on Netflix, where it joins the streamer’s adaptation of The Sandman with a fresh cast. As an entry in what appears to be a growing Sandman universe on Netflix, Dead Boy Detectives is an entertaining, if uneven procedural with some imaginative supernatural hijinks and an uncertain tone.

There’s a solid and intriguing premise: Edwin (George Rexstrew) and Charles (Jayden Revri) are the Dead Boys Detective Agency, a duo of ghosts who have elected to stay on the mortal plane to solve mysteries for other ghosts and help them move on. The case-of-the-week formula is a tantalizing and fun pairing with a supernatural setting because it provides evergreen opportunities to explore new corners of the world. It also helps that the show is essentially a clever reversal of the “ghost detective” setup where instead of a perceptive mortal resolving the grievances of ghosts, the ghosts do the exorcizing. Or, more accurately, they help the restless dead find peace so that when Death (the luminous and newly mononym’d Kirby, back again) comes by, she can take them to the other side. As ghost stragglers amongst the living, Edwin and Charles risk discovery by Death, who would surely take them into the afterlife.

After dropping the viewers into the middle of a job gone a bit sideways and showing how the boys use a combo of quick thinking and magic to get the better of a rampaging ghost, they take a meeting with a little girl ghost, with a glowing squid pet, who tells them a friend of hers is in trouble. This friend is a medium, Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson), who has become possessed by a demon. The boys hop to it and exorcize the demon in a kinetic sequence that includes a subway car rolling in the tunnel, but when Crystal comes to, she’s lost her memory. Edwin, a young man slain in 1916 and an escapee from Hell, is prepared to throw Crystal out, but sweet 1980s boy Charles welcomes her in and is maybe even a bit smitten. While they initially set out to restore Crystal’s memories, the trio gets caught up in a whole new case involving a witch, a kidnapped girl, and a giant snake that cements them as a team and leaves them on the witch’s shitlist.

The world of Dead Boy Detectives is appropriately surreal and fantastical, with a sense of dream logic pervading. Like, why did that little girl ghost have a magic squid pet? Who knows/who cares? It’s a world where that’s normal to some degree. It helps that very few rules are explicitly spelled out; if there’s one thing that turns me off, it’s the plot coming to a halt so that a rule book can be explained to me. This feels doubly important for fantasy media where, in my humble opinion, magic should feel mystical and a little mysterious. By not explaining the squid, the show’s universe is more strange and surreal. With each case, we’re introduced to new weirdos, new arcane spells, new ghosts; the world gets bigger and more magical. The show achieves the feeling that around any corner is a new oddity or spectacle and I commend that. Where I think it stumbles is in how it manages the chaos. As exciting, bizarre, and lurid as the Hieronymus Bosch approach is, a scope that overstuffed can easily become unwieldy and impossible to balance.

The plot comes fast and furious on Dead Boy Detectives, at least in terms of how aggressively it branches. In the course of the first episode, we are introduced to many, many plotlines: Edwin’s dark past that’s turned him cold, Charles’ crush on Crystal, an afterlife administrative organization out to get the boys, a witch with a vendetta, a demon harassing Crystal, Crystal being “special,” a weird butcher (Briana Cuoco) who rents rooms to Crystal and a shut-in named Niko (Yuyu Kitamura) who can manifest colorful figments, and all of those plots get serviced and advanced while also challenging the gang with the case of the week and throwing in colorful world details like talking cats (which lead to a new plotline, natch). When I initially saw that the episodes have a runtime of 50 mins to an hour, I was a little worried about padding, but silly me, the opposite occurred. With so many subplots and character backstories to play out, the show jumps from thing to thing, advancing each by gradual increments. It gives the series a slightly breathless quality that bleeds into other elements of the show.

DBD was wise to use the structure of a new mystery to solve each episode, but it seems more interested in overarching character dramas. With the average episode whirling around from plotline to plotline, the primary case can often take a backseat. This doesn’t always happen and some episodes balance things better than others, but on the whole, the cases don’t feel as satisfying as they should because we haven’t spent enough time with them. More often than not, whatever case the trio is on becomes a backdrop for their more personal struggles.

Edwin is still recovering from 70 years in Hell and often lashes out at others. Charles is a sweetpea with a heart of gold who finds himself in some love troubles. Crystal is stalked by the demon David (David Iacono), who menaces her with a nightmare realm where three huge eyeballs stare from above. These plotlines are compelling enough, but the writing dips occasionally into YA-ish shades that I would likely attribute to executive producer Greg Berlanti. There was a similar teen soap feeling on his CW superhero shows and, when mixed with the supernatural milieu, can feel a little like a Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with more swearing. Nowhere was this more apparent than with Lukas Gage’s appearance as the lord of the local felines, Cat King. He high-beams everyone and everything with intense sex-eyes and he thinks Edwin is “fascinating.” It’s cheesy, it’s a lot, but I also laughed at Gage’s delivery of “I’m a consensual Cat King,” so I was still having fun.

The last thing I need to touch on is the lighting; it’s too damn dark! Many scenes take place at night or in dim, shadowy spaces, but the darkness is so heavy and occlusive that many sequences are hard to make out. Maybe Netflix skinflinted the budget on this and they had to hide the seams and patches under darkness, but it made it so several action scenes were impossible to follow. It’s unfortunate because many set pieces are inventive and cool but are hampered by not being able to see them well. Overall, Dead Boy Detectives is a solid supernatural procedural with some fun ideas and stories to tell, if maybe a few too many. Now if only someone would turn on the lights!