Nice review, and agree about most of the casting. Losing Death\'s look was a major disappointment to me. For me, her look was 90% of her character.
Gaiman likes every adaptation until he gets a bit of temporal distance from it. He\'s definitely not someone whose opinion I care about when it comes to adaptations of his own works... in that later way he\'s actually much like Moore to me.
\"I am not person who has a racist hissy fit over giving white characters Race Lift, so long the actor does the character well\"
- eyebrow raise*
\"but if you make the character less compelling than they were in the source material such as Rose here, then changing the character in such way becomes a meaningless gesture.\"
Translation, if an actor of color is given poor direction they should be replaced with a white actor?
^ yeah... that was a weird take.
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Handsome Squidward and Raven Patton Oswalt in Dreamland
Gotta say up top I got into The Sandman (1989) later than I should have, I read a compilation comic in high school which had "The Sound of her Wings" and fell for Gaiman's take on Death (not to Thanos levels but still) but it was my older brother who had actually read The Sandman back to front. I was kinda dreading a live action adaptation, much preferring the DC Showcase Death short. Having watched the series and read the comic, I can say it's a solid adaptation but I think it's kinda a mixed bag of a show overall.
The show has mostly a solid cast, Charles Dance is great, I adore David Thewlis, Boyd Holbrook is awesome, Patten Oswalt is a fun audience surrogate, Jenna Coleman while not at all like comic Constantine can been seen as a fun Genderflip of the Keanu version, Gwendoline Christie I really liked as Lucifer since Bowie can't play character and Kirby Howell-Baptiste I thought was alright as Death even though I am (along with a lot of people) too attached to her comic look. There were some weak links though, Tom Sturridge is a fine actor but whatever he was doing with Dream just didn't work for me, I burst out laughing at his costumes in Episode 6 and while I know they had to ditch white skin for practical reasons they had the budget to at least attempt his ethereal shadow-like costume from the comic and try make him seem less like a tryhard goth guy in a cool coat. My dream casting of Dream would be a 2000s era Dlyan Moran, Bernard Black has the kind of energy comic Morpheus has imo. Also I don't know what direction Mylène Wagram and Razane Jammal were given as Rose and Lyta, but they were pretty flat and unengaging, which becomes a real problem when Rose becomes a central character. I am not person who has a racist hissy fit over giving white characters Race Lift, so long the actor does the character well (e.g Idris Elba's Heimdell) I don't mind, but if you make the character less compelling than they were in the source material such as Rose here, then changing the character in such way becomes a meaningless gesture. Though I did appreciate the Leaning on the Fourth Wall line where the scummy Madoc who wants brownie points swears the adaptation of his work will be 50% people of color.
My biggest gripe with the show was how bland a lot of it looked, the comic has such Awesome Art and Mind Screw imagery but the show in comparison (with the exception of a few locations like Hell) mostly took place in mundane places and lifeless green screen open spaces. Stranger Things could make dream-like locations on a Netflix budget I don't think there's much excuse for this series to fall short. Neil Gaiman is really supportive of the show which I like, he's the polar opposite of Alan Moore when it comes to adaptations of his work. My favourite episodes were "24/7" and "Dream of a Thousand Cats; Calliope", loved the diner stuff in the former and the animation in the latter. It's a decent DC-not actually DC show.