When I am assigned to write about a big-budget fantasy series for this fun TV column, I know I'm in for a week of tedious emails.
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that I have watched The Sandman (available now on Netflix), the Netflix x Warner x DC crossover event of the summer.
Are you feeling it, sire? There is a disturbance in the email realm. No, it can't be! I am being yelled at in unison by thousands of people who still own DVD collections!
Anyway, please stop telling me what subreddits to subscribe to, or what arcane maps to check out of the library, because I actually like this one.
There has been a lot of fantasy television in the past couple of years, almost all of it bad, because they ignored the two primary rules I have made up and never actually told anybody about them.
Fantasy should ask, "What if this thing happened?" Wouldn't it be strange? Set out some uneasy rules to govern that weirdness. That's all there is to it.
Over that taut canvas, you can tell intriguing human stories. What would happen if every man on Earth died in an event? What if a supernatural cabal controlled the government but died from nosebleeds?
Can a book predict the future? If the studio is willing, you can extend a story by painting an interesting world or by having a character who is basically on a road trip in search of a golden trinket.
As a result of the rarity of the latter, we are culturally poorer. In any case, I'm not here to kick off Westworld's fourth season.
We should, however, talk about The Sandman, which is very good - probably great. A wealth of source material can be found in Neil Gaiman's gothic tales - which have resisted adaptation thus far.
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