of preludes and dolls

[jazzfish]

Neil Gaiman, David S. Goyer, et al, The Sandman (season 1)

I originally wasn't going to watch the Sandman series. The first trailer looked like they'd done a decent enough job with it, but it just wasn't grabbing me. Then Erin and I watched a couple of clips, one of Death and one of Lucifer, and that piqued my interest enough that we binged the whole thing this past weekend.

So. It's ten episodes, covering Preludes & Nocturnes and The Doll's House. And it's... look, if you know the comics, it's probably the best possible adaptation, in the same way that Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring was the best possible adaptation of Fellowship. (I'm specifying Fellowship and not LotR because twenty years later I'm still mad about a number of unforced errors script choices in Two Towers and RotK. Fellowship was generally alright, though.) They went to a lot of trouble to take a bunch of visuals direct from Kieth & Dringenberg's art. The midpoint episode "The Sound Of Her Wings", incorporating the Hob Gadling story as well as the eponymous issue, is some seriously excellent television.

In some ways the show is better than the comics. They've made the Corinthian the antagonist of the whole series, weaving him through the Preludes episodes and giving him a more active role in Doll's House, so it all feels less bolted together and more like a narrative. They cut some extraneous stuff that you don't even notice and spend just enough more time on minor characters (Jed Walker, Unity Kincaid, Hector Hall) to give their storylines some substance. Turning John Constantine into 'Johanna Constantine' is a neat choice, and (speaking as a devout John Constantine fanboy) probably a good one? It helps that Jenna Coleman pulls it off with a great deal of panache.

I didn't like '24 Hours' in Preludes, and I still didn't like it as '24/7.' Though here it's more "that just didn't work for me at all" and less "this is horrific and unnecessary," so I guess that's an improvement? And while Patton Oswalt does a fine job as Matthew the raven, there's something about his voice or his delivery that's just a step out of phase with the rest of the show.

I assume next season will be "Season of Mists and some random issues." I'm looking forward to it, and to Brief Lives and The Kindly Ones. And who knows, maybe they'll come to their senses and skip over A Game Of You.

Meanwhile I should get on with rereading The Kindly Ones.

Comments

[hwesta]

Glad you're enjoying it! I haven't read the comics or watched the show, but I came across this discussion of A Game of You https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/seananmcguire/692769794077933568 that explains some of the historical context, and suggests it'll be updated for the last couple decades when (if) they get to it.

[jazzfish]

Ahh. I was aware of most of that but hadn't explicitly made the 'dianic wiccan tradition' connection. That makes a lot of sense. I'm still grumpy about it but it makes sense.

I'm glad they're at least thinking about it for if&when they get there! And to be clear, my objections to A Game Of You are partly "it handles trans content poorly" and partly "i do not care for this story." It's a multi-issue arc where Morpheus is basically absent, and in which very little changes for its characters. It really does feel narratively detached from the rest of Sandman, and while that's okay and understandable in the single-issue stories it's jarring in an entire arc.

(Thematically, yeah, it's connected to the larger themes of "the stories we tell make us who we are" and "who we are is always changing," but a thematic connection is tough to hang a TV narrative on.)

(And I'd be happy to loan you the comics if you want to read them.)