Even The Guardian, hitherto one of Neil Gaiman’s most reliable cheerleaders and microphones, has finally discovered that Gaiman isn’t a very good storyteller, let alone showrunner:
The Sandman season two review – Neil Gaiman’s emo drama is so pretentious it ruins everything
The Sandman really is a curious beast. Where other, similar series centre around a hero warrior, the main guy here is more of an emo worrier, for ever standing stiffly in the shadowy corner of the frame, evading other characters’ gazes as he sulkily delivers platitudes suffused with doom and – quite literally, given the production’s apparent lighting shortage, gloom. The rhombus-jawed Sturridge is physically ideal for the role of Morpheus, with his concave cheeks and a set of eyelashes that could have someone’s eye out. But while his impeccably backcombed barnet and swishy monochrome outfits suggest he is about to break into a chorus of Echo and the Bunnymen’s The Killing Moon at any moment – someone in the design department enjoys their 1980s pop, because they have also styled Freddie Fox’s Loki to look eerily like Billy Idol – he is, by design, never that entertaining. Even when he is turning Thor’s throbbing hammer to dust or personally granting William Shakespeare creative immortality, what could be fantastic adventures are always shuffled through stroppily as if they are tedious obligations.
It just about works as an elaborate analogy for teenage disaffection – a time when you feel as if you’re acquiring some sort of awful power, but everyone becomes angry when you try to wield it, and not knowing why makes you more peevish still. When the show co-opts Greek, Norse and Christian mythologies, though, it doesn’t do much with them.
Gaiman still hasn’t been locked up or cancelled yet, and it’s still possible that between his ethnic and Scientologist connections, he will continue to escape accountability until he dies unrepentant and takes his seat that would appear to be reserved for Hell.
But the bloom is well off the rose. Even the people and organizations that have been blowing hallucinogenic smoke up everyone’s backsides for the last 30 years have finally cottoned on to the charade and are no longer interested in helping him maintain his facade.
And that unmasking may well be the cruelest fate of all to a raging narcissist who has always known that he was an imposter.