So. The Sandman. Dang.
I am aware that people are having various conniptions about the casting, and particularly about the casting of Death, but fuck the haters because Kirby Howell-Baptiste is an absolute delight in the “The Sound of Her Wings” episode. Standout performance by far is David Thewlis’s John Dee, whose polite menace was perfectly pitched for maximum tension - the scenes of the car journey with him and Sarah Niles’ Rosemary are edge-of-seat thriller stuff. Gwendolyn Christie’s Lucifer shows a lot of promise, Jenna Coleman’s modern Johanna Constantine works just fine, and Boyd Holbrook is a decent Corinthian.
Weak points: much as I love Patton Oswalt as voice actor, he’s not doing it for me here, Charles Dance was basically doing the same character he does in everything, they’ve made Mazikeen way too sexy for a demon that drives men mad at the sight of her, and FOR FUCK SAKE TOM STURRIDGE YOU ARE NOT BATMAN! STOP WITH THE GRAVELLY MUMBLING!
There are various changes from the story in the comics (I’m still deciding whether the diner scene is better, worse, a mix of both or just different) but by and large Season 1 covers up to the end of The Doll’s House storyline closely enough. Roll on Season 2 and Season of Mists.
In other news we finished season 1 of Heartstopper, which remains delightful. Eventually noticed that Stephen Fry (who also appears in Sandman) was doing the school announcements, and very entertainingly too.