‘The Sandman’ Has, Well, a Sandman Problem

(spoilers for season two of The Sandman)

The Sandman, the graphic novel series written by Neil Gaiman (whose fall from grace has been discussed at length) that ran from 1989 to 1996, is a wildly imaginative story that smoothly weaves canon-spanning myth and literature in an assortment of related narratives connected through The Dreaming, the kingdom that Morpheus, the Sandman, oversees, granting him a measure of command over every creature that slumbers.

So how did a vision this grand become so dreadfully boring?

Season one was released in 2022, a long-awaited live-action adaptation was teased, discussed, and shuffled around for literal decades before a final deal was made with Netflix. Allan Heiberg was tapped to act as showrunner while Gaiman and David S. Goyer acted as executive producers. The first season was mostly fine, laggy in the first half, but it came together as the season went on.

Season two feels far less cohesive than its predecessor. The main thrust of the season, predominantly based on The Kindly Ones storyline in the comic series, involves Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) trying to avoid his demise, as well as the destruction of his kingdom, after killing his son Orpheus (never mind that it was merciful death), and I’d be lying if I said that this storyline feels like anything other than an absolute slog.

Pacing is definitely part of the issue—the season would have easily fit into ten episodes instead of its overly generous eleven, if not less (there’s also a twelfth “bonus” episode, which is out today)—along with an addiction to monologuing that would make Mike Flanagan wince, but there’s a larger, unavoidable issue at play: Morpheus is dull as dishwater.

A boring lead who’s in roughly 80% of each episode doesn’t bode well for a show, though it’s possibly a godsend for insomniacs. His presence renders important scenes into a dose of Ambien administered in a cloud of CGI. Even the dialogue, already bogged down by exposition, is delivered with the exhaustion of a long-haul trucker trying to get through an overnight run. This isn’t a product of my imagination either; some experimenting led me to discover that maxing the playback speed makes the titular character, ironically also known as Dream, speak at an average talking speed rather than that persistently…drawn out…cadence.

This isn’t a brand-new acting choice for this season (a symptom of season one’s sloggy periods was also Sturridge’s tendency for self-serious intoning disguised as profundity), but it does feel downright pervasive this time around. Such is the price of a show being as committed to dourness as The Sandman is. Morpheus is far from a barrel of laughs in any Sandman iteration—optimism is usually Death’s (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) department, but Howell-Baptiste, one of the first season’s bright spots, has difficulty breaking through the murkiness of the material this time around—but the realm of dreams and myths comes off as a passion-less affair.

It’s a deadly one-two punch combination of performance and writing. Sturridge, as I mentioned earlier, holds fast to a narrow range of expression, likely informed by the fact that Morpheus is kind of a self-serious dick. It’s a shame because in the rare moments an emotion beyond “faint scorn” or “ruefulness” is permitted, we actually start to feel the weight of Morpheus’ long existence, especially in scenes with his librarian and loyal right-hand, Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong, who’s a standout), which are as good as they are short-lived.

What really drove the point home for me was realizing how lively The Sandman can be when there’s, well, no Sandman. There are exceptions, of course—the land of Faerie is largely a wash and the less I say about the Lyta Hall (Razane Jammal) storyline, the better—but the success rate is too high to ignore. The denizens of The Dreaming have a charm to their interactions (the warm gravitas of Stephen Fry’s Fiddler’s Green counterbalances the more jokey presence of Patton Oswalt and Mark Hamill as Matthew the Raven and Merv Pumpkinhead, respectively) and the cross-folkloric pairing of Loki (Freddie Fox) and Puck (Jack Gleeson) keeps viewers guessing what’ll happen next. But the biggest draw is easily the return of the Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook), who’s paired with Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman) in an unlikely detective duo. Placing the purring swagger of Holbrook on proceedings this drab is like splashing bright paint on a dark canvas: it’s all I’m going to look at. Even if I liked the romantic tension more than the actual fulfilment of said romance, their scenes commanded my attention, which is a lot more than I can say for a lot of the show.

I believe the responsibility for Morpheus’s dourness lies less on Sturridge and more on the show’s direction—notably, season one had multiple directors, while Jamie Childs is the sole director for season two. The most damning proof can be found in the fact that Jacob Anderson, lauded actor and star of the unparalleled Interview with a Vampire, winds up suffering from the same cruel affliction as Sturridge after his character, Daniel Hall, takes on the Sandman mantle. Tonally they slightly differ, as befitting a newborn being, but the drollness remains.

The reception of stylistic choices are, of course, highly subjective. But with my reading of the source material many years behind me, the TV adaptation makes me wonder if my memory of a spell-binding central figure is faulty. There are other flaws at play as well—the script borders on tedious at times—chief among them being the general lack of emotional heft in the family interactions of the Endless (genuinely, why is this show so devoid of passion?!), but having a lead character with so little charisma only compounds those issues. There’s enough magic here to keep The Sandman from being a nightmare, but the dream of a truly worthy live-action adaptation sadly remains unfulfilled.

All episodes of The Sandman are available to stream on Netflix.

Kaleena Rivera is the TV Editor for Pajiba. She can be found on Bluesky here.