Dead Boy Detectives (Review)
May. 1st, 2024 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakSource knowledge: I was familiar with their comicverse origin story, since it’s a part of Seasons of Mist in Sandman (Netflix show only viewers, that should be the first story arc of season 2), but had not read their actual spin-off.
Mind you: I don’t think I ever reread the Charles and Edwin parts of Seasons of Mist despite having reread the trade collection numerous times, not because they’re not affecting but because they’re too much so, and among the darkest things Neil Gaiman ever wrote, only surpassed within Sandman by 24 Hours. The Netflix show provides flashbacks to it, but briefly except very late into the season, and also our heroes have been aged up from prepubescent kids to 16 years olds played by adult actors, which does change the effect a bit when in both cases in the original backstory you had children tormented to death by their peers. (And finding comfort with each other, that’s very important in the orignal story, too, but doesn’t change the grimness. Given that Neil Gaiman supposedly said the Charles parts of Seasons of Mist are autobiographical, I’d say they join C.S. Lewis (who called his Public School “Belsen” in Surprised by Joy), Charlotte Bronte (see also: Jane Eyre) and George Orwell’s descriptions of British Boarding School as Hell On Earth.) Anyway, that might be one reason for the aging up, but I suspect the bigger one is that the producers hope for more than one season, and if your main characters can’t age by definition (since they’re ghosts), children are out. Not to mention that immortal teenagers provided them with a chance for letting the Cat King and Monty the Raven hit on Edwin, and Edwin pine for Charles, which I very much doubt would have happened if they’d been their comicsverse age at death. Interestingly, though, what was kept was Charles’ original year of death from the Sandman comics, 1989, instead of letting him be recently deceased and moving his and Edwin’s first encounter to the near present the way the Netflix Sandman moved the entire timeline for Dream from the 1980s to the present. Here I think it’s so Edwin and Charles have a backstory of their own of having already been friends for decades before the story starts.
But enough about the comics - now to the show proper. Which does maintain its Sandman connections. I knew about the Death cameo in the pilot episode via general osmosis, but what surprised me is that we also get a Despair cameo near the end, which actually is the first time the actress playing Despair gets to do more than standing around in the background - and she’s good at it, too. By and large, though, the overall tone is lighter and more whimsical, and the afterlife bureaucracy at the heels of our heroes is, in fact, if anything a nod to Good Omens, since I don’t recall it from either incarnation of Sandman. The show manages a good and tricky balance between being silly fun and taking seriously the occasional tragedy it touches (i.e. in the episode where our heroes have to solve a family murder which turns out to be a case of domestic violence that also triggers memories in Charles), going for trusting the actors with their reactions over depictions of actual gore. It does stand and fall with the character dynamics, of course, and here I was deeply impressed on how well written and acted the other regulars - Crystal, Nico, Jenny - were, and how Crystal’s seasonal storyarc was arguably the driving force behind much of the plot. This made for a really endearing ensemble. As for the guest stars, Esther the Witch was a classic Gaiman villain, while the Cat King - and of course cats had to play a role - carried o the tradition of trickster figures of uncertain loyalties with a soft spot for our heroes of the equally cat-named Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere. I was (pleasantly) surprised that the Night Nurse, who at first seemed to be just a minor bureaucratic villain, was fleshed out and had become a character of the “antagonist forced to work with protagonist against third parties” type, which is one of the narrative tropes I like a lot if it’s well executed.
As for the boys themselves: yes, you can argue that children fixating on the detective thing and calling themselves “The Dead Boys Dective Agency” is more believable than teenagers (albeit from different eras) doing so, but honestly, I didn’t mind. Making Charles the more emotionally clued in and approachable paid off in an intriguing way because it means he doesn’t come across as either repressing or lying when responding to Edwin’s last episode confession of love that he loves him, too, without being in love with him. Which meant that the big confession scene felt neither like a rejection nor a clichéd happy ending where once feelings are spoken, all is magically solved. What’s important is that their loyalty and affection for each other is believable through the season, even when they’re exasparated by each other occasionally. What the show never goes for is an “us against the world” vibe, letting them befriend Crystal and Nico (as well as Nico and Crystal each other, both Jenny, and then there’s Edwin’s thing with the magical beings who hit on him), which means for a whole network of intense emotions and connections, and I loved that.
All in all: If there’s a second season, I’ll keep watching, if not, I hope they get cameos in future Sandman seasons (though clearly not in Seasons of Mist, given the reason Edwin got out of Hell in the first place has been disconnected from Seasons of Mist events).
Mind you: I don’t think I ever reread the Charles and Edwin parts of Seasons of Mist despite having reread the trade collection numerous times, not because they’re not affecting but because they’re too much so, and among the darkest things Neil Gaiman ever wrote, only surpassed within Sandman by 24 Hours. The Netflix show provides flashbacks to it, but briefly except very late into the season, and also our heroes have been aged up from prepubescent kids to 16 years olds played by adult actors, which does change the effect a bit when in both cases in the original backstory you had children tormented to death by their peers. (And finding comfort with each other, that’s very important in the orignal story, too, but doesn’t change the grimness. Given that Neil Gaiman supposedly said the Charles parts of Seasons of Mist are autobiographical, I’d say they join C.S. Lewis (who called his Public School “Belsen” in Surprised by Joy), Charlotte Bronte (see also: Jane Eyre) and George Orwell’s descriptions of British Boarding School as Hell On Earth.) Anyway, that might be one reason for the aging up, but I suspect the bigger one is that the producers hope for more than one season, and if your main characters can’t age by definition (since they’re ghosts), children are out. Not to mention that immortal teenagers provided them with a chance for letting the Cat King and Monty the Raven hit on Edwin, and Edwin pine for Charles, which I very much doubt would have happened if they’d been their comicsverse age at death. Interestingly, though, what was kept was Charles’ original year of death from the Sandman comics, 1989, instead of letting him be recently deceased and moving his and Edwin’s first encounter to the near present the way the Netflix Sandman moved the entire timeline for Dream from the 1980s to the present. Here I think it’s so Edwin and Charles have a backstory of their own of having already been friends for decades before the story starts.
But enough about the comics - now to the show proper. Which does maintain its Sandman connections. I knew about the Death cameo in the pilot episode via general osmosis, but what surprised me is that we also get a Despair cameo near the end, which actually is the first time the actress playing Despair gets to do more than standing around in the background - and she’s good at it, too. By and large, though, the overall tone is lighter and more whimsical, and the afterlife bureaucracy at the heels of our heroes is, in fact, if anything a nod to Good Omens, since I don’t recall it from either incarnation of Sandman. The show manages a good and tricky balance between being silly fun and taking seriously the occasional tragedy it touches (i.e. in the episode where our heroes have to solve a family murder which turns out to be a case of domestic violence that also triggers memories in Charles), going for trusting the actors with their reactions over depictions of actual gore. It does stand and fall with the character dynamics, of course, and here I was deeply impressed on how well written and acted the other regulars - Crystal, Nico, Jenny - were, and how Crystal’s seasonal storyarc was arguably the driving force behind much of the plot. This made for a really endearing ensemble. As for the guest stars, Esther the Witch was a classic Gaiman villain, while the Cat King - and of course cats had to play a role - carried o the tradition of trickster figures of uncertain loyalties with a soft spot for our heroes of the equally cat-named Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere. I was (pleasantly) surprised that the Night Nurse, who at first seemed to be just a minor bureaucratic villain, was fleshed out and had become a character of the “antagonist forced to work with protagonist against third parties” type, which is one of the narrative tropes I like a lot if it’s well executed.
As for the boys themselves: yes, you can argue that children fixating on the detective thing and calling themselves “The Dead Boys Dective Agency” is more believable than teenagers (albeit from different eras) doing so, but honestly, I didn’t mind. Making Charles the more emotionally clued in and approachable paid off in an intriguing way because it means he doesn’t come across as either repressing or lying when responding to Edwin’s last episode confession of love that he loves him, too, without being in love with him. Which meant that the big confession scene felt neither like a rejection nor a clichéd happy ending where once feelings are spoken, all is magically solved. What’s important is that their loyalty and affection for each other is believable through the season, even when they’re exasparated by each other occasionally. What the show never goes for is an “us against the world” vibe, letting them befriend Crystal and Nico (as well as Nico and Crystal each other, both Jenny, and then there’s Edwin’s thing with the magical beings who hit on him), which means for a whole network of intense emotions and connections, and I loved that.
All in all: If there’s a second season, I’ll keep watching, if not, I hope they get cameos in future Sandman seasons (though clearly not in Seasons of Mist, given the reason Edwin got out of Hell in the first place has been disconnected from Seasons of Mist events).
