‘The Sandman’ Arrives On Netflix With Miraculously Great Review Scores

It was a project long thought so unfilmable, even its creator didn’t want anyone to try to adapt it. But it seems that despite recent quality control issues, the stars have aligned and Netflix has done The Sandman justice with its first season, live today on the service.

The Sandman is reviewing well so far among both critics and fans. It currently has an 88% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a 92% audience score at the time of this writing, with the show being praised as a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the classic Neil Gaiman story.

“From smart casting and strong writing to exquisitely eerie, noir-meets-horror production design that makes thoughtful use of digital effects, this is easily one of the best small-screen comic adaptations ever made,” says a glowing TIME review.

The Sandman is ten episodes that range in length from 37 minutes to 54 minutes, with most around 45-48 minutes. Pretty standard, though not “Disney superhero short” where all the recent Marvel series have been no more than six episodes each. Of course, despite being based on a DC comic, Sandman is pretty different genre, far more fantasy than superhero.

The Sandman is not being presented as a limited series, meaning if it does well on Netflix, that it could come back for more. Given these early scores, and Netflix’s past troubles with comic book adaptations (cough, Jupiter’s Legacy), I think they would relish a hit like this, and it’s icing on the cake that of all things, it’s a Sandman project that they made work, which is a difficulty level above and beyond most other adaptations.

One of the reasons it works? That is likely because at long last Neil Gaiman finally agreed to sign on to help develop the adaptation personally. It has taken 35 years to get this adaptation made as it has gone through pitch after pitch, concept after concept, before finally manifesting as this Netflix show. Why did Gaiman change his mind, and choose this format? Because of the way television changed, blending the big budgets of movies with the long-form storytelling of long strings of episodes:

“The times have changed and, suddenly, the idea that you have a 3,000-page story that could be turned into 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hours of quality television — it turns into something that’s actually an enormous feature and a wonderful thing,” Gaiman said.

For now, this seems like a win for everyone, Gaiman and his team, fans of the original, and Netflix, which has needed wins in the face of harder times lately which have involved cutbacks, layoffs and cancellations. The Sandman looks like a hit, and could turn into that “40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hours of quality television” over time, that Gaiman is so excited about. We’ll have to see.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.