The inventiveness of Neil Gaiman over the seven years that Sandman was published by Vertigo as a regular series, combined with the anthology structure of its volumes, allows the comic to be a great storehouse of ideas and varied characters. Two of them now star in their own television spin-off of the Sandman from the Netflixentitled Dead Detective Boys – a pleasant surprise and a breath of newness amidst the great déjà vu of game adaptations, remakes of sagas and live-action versions of anime.
It’s hard to escape this feeling of repetition when all the stories seem to have already been told. The very premise of the derivative even recalls the spiritual detectives that the general public recently saw in the live-action of YuYu Hakusho. We follow Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), two young people who died and chose not to face the mysteries that awaited them in the afterlife – as a result, they become fugitives from Perpetuo played by Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Death, who reprises his role from the main series in the derivative. Edwin and Charles don’t just exist on the earthly plane – they decide to investigate supernatural crimes, becoming the ones “Dead Detective Boys“.
Edwin, who died in 1916, is formal, reserved, repressed and orderly. Charles, who died in the 1980s, is comparatively an indomitable and mischievous boy. Although they are friendly ghosts and walk the Earth, they are not without trauma, of which Edwin has an extra measure, having spent seven decades in Hell because of an “administrative error”. Originally presented in the arc “Season of Mists”in Sandman #25, the duo then stars in this macabre take on two popular genres of British children’s fiction: boarding school literature and teenage detective stories.
There are layers and layers of tradition and repetition, so in this incarnation of Dead Detective Boys. Mortal or immortal agents who help restless souls complete unfinished business and move on to the light (or something) are also a major trope of fantasy storytelling, and in that there’s even more familiarity in this adaptation of Gaiman’s creations. The taste for novelty is less due to the changes, in relation to the HQ, operated by the producers Steve Yockey (The Flight Attendant) It is Beth Schwartz (Sweet Tooth), than by the engagement in making this range of references something authentic and particular.
The supporting cast and the variation of situations and challenges help in the endeavor. On their journey, the lonely duo is joined, by a serendipitous coincidence, by the clairvoyant Crystal (Kassius Nelson) and her friend Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), who are able to see the ghost boys. It is this unlikely team that we follow in eight episodes that consist of solving different cases – each of them involving a dose of risk and a certain narrative boldness and some breaking of expectations.
The series presents the particular challenges of episodic adventures and, in parallel, fuels long arcs that pit the protagonists against Esther (Jenn Lyon), a glamorous witch; the Cat King (Lukas Gage), who keeps Edwin under magical house arrest in Port Townsend; and the Night Nurse (Ruth Connell), a middle manager of the afterlife (it wouldn’t be a British narrative if Death’s kingdom weren’t portrayed as a bureaucratic office, governed by “permissions and approvals”), who treats the boys’ continued presence on Earth as an offense to your sense of order.
If there is nothing innovative here, on the other hand everything is extraordinarily well done, intelligently written. There is disturbance, there is discomfort, there is drama and there is comedy. Occasionally, you can anticipate a turnaround – because it is a turnaround that long years of familiarity have taught us to expect – but on the whole the investment and belief of Dead Detective Boys in its solid and fun concept it compensates for the slight déjà vu. Without being as ambitious as Sandmanthe series now has a challenge as big as escaping Death: reaching its target audience among Netflix releases and still escaping the shadow of cancellation.
Dead Detective Boys
Ongoing (2024- )
Dead Detective Boys
Ongoing (2024- )
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