The Sandman: Sleep of the Just

 "We begin in the waking world, which humanity insists on calling the real world..."

For once I manage to blog the first episode of a hot new streaming serial on the day of its release- yay me. Even better, it's Sandman. I haven't read all of the sixty-odd issues of Neil Gaiman's late '80s masterpiece, thick with meaning, literary allusion and proper '80s goth aesthetic, but I've read enough of the early issues to cover all of this first season which, I understand, covers the first two arcs. And it does so magnificently. Gaiman has a previous triumph under his belt in terms of transferring a print masterpiece to screen magnigicently with Good Omens. He's only bloody gone and done it again.

This first episode looks sumptuous, and the casting is triumphant. Tom Sturridge seems born to play Dream, helmet perfectly realised. Charles Dance as the Magus is a captivating villain, for Dream literally so. I'm not sure the chronology quite works (Dream is captured in 1916 when young Alex is a child, but Alex and his partner Paul are both still alive when Dream is (quite magnificently) freed after "more than a century" of captivity?), but the epic tale of Dream's capture and eventual escape is gripping telly, not only because of the concepts but the very real characters and their nicely drawn relationships- Rodericks cruelty to second son Alex after his first son dies at Gallipolli, or Ethel's fury towards the man who dares presume to decide whether or not she will keep her baby.

The Corinthian is a deeply disturbing villain, an escaped nightmare who seems to take the eyes of his victims, but many of these characters we shall see grow and grow in this questlike, epic and- yes- dreamlike piece of brilliance.