The Gaiman universe continues its journey as one of the most prolific and successful in contemporary literature in film and series. Mixing fantasy and science fiction with culture and his marked British roots, the writer and filmmaker returns to the fore with the first season of The Dead Detectives.
Netflix has given a good account of the success of The Sandmanwhich picked up the gauntlet of one of the comic masterpieces with the Vertigo and DC seal, and has followed the usual dynamic when a universe works: a spin-off must be made.
The Dead Detectives it is the result. A new series, this time with a marked youthful tone, based on the comic of the same name by Pornsak Pichetshote about a pair of paranormal investigators… who are ghosts. They are dead, wow.
George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri They are Edwin and Charles, two kids who have been best friends for decades despite looking like twenty-somethings. Privileges from the other side. They spend their entire lives avoiding the Grim Reaper to continue solving supernatural cases of possessions, dark magic and strange disappearances.
Start macerating that Supernatural aroma, we’ll get back to it. In one of their cases they come across Crystal (Kassius Nelson), a young medium possessed by a demon (who is also her ex) and who will end up joining the team thanks to the usefulness of her power for the detectives’ plans. .
That is the basis with which The Netflix series enters the archetypal youth mystery structurewith a neon aesthetic whose poster is a pure representation of what we are going to see in its eight 45-minute episodes.
The Dead Detectives They will solve supernatural cases individually in each episode, with the case of Crystal herself and that of the detectives, who continue to escape their inevitable destiny in the Afterlife, as perennial narrative axes during the first season.
An immortal witch, the King of Cats or a haunted house a la Winchester Mansion are some of the plots of its first chapters so that we can easily enter the structural dynamics that are freed from all depth to get straight to the point with a lot of rhythm .
Neil Gaiman can be proud
Whether you have seen The Sandman Or else, you can watch this spin-off without it being a burden. It is another appendix of this universe in recent expansion with which Netflix now aims to attract the platform’s younger audience to its particular approach to fantasy.
In fact, this is a detail that will interest you if you are a fan of Neil Gaiman or the original comics on which the series is based: there are several points less on the dial of horror and the viscerality with which his scenes became nightmares for many of its readers.
The most obvious example is that of Edwin. Both detectives, as you know, are dead. And their deaths were not exactly kind. Edwin’s came after he was used as a macabre joke in a satanic ritual that, to no one’s surprise, went wrong.
Although the recreation of the scene in the series does not have a technical but to put on it, its approach becomes lighter and even paradoxically casual for the terrifying reality of having a demon drag you to hell, absorbing your soul. And it works like a charm, really.
The entire season is full of a fresh, natural and contemporary humor that laughs at even the most unimaginable experiences to reduce the dramatic load and make Los Detectives Muertos a marathon series for that audience that placed it in the Top 10 series like Stranger Things, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina either Locke & Key.
Its connection with The Sandman, however, is practically anecdotal. Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) appears in the first episode to tie his fans to the new content, but we will have to wait for a second season so that the ties of both series can be intertwined by the narrative constriction of the original comics.
Greetings to the new Winchester brothers
The Dead Detectives It has that same air of a dreamlike fable that characterizes Neil Gaiman and that we have enjoyed Good Omens or one’s own The Sandman. And we owe much of the blame to the acting cast.
The two protagonists, George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri, do a fabulous job of representing not only the disparity in their characters, but also the era from which they come. Edwin, George’s character, died in the early 20th century. Jayden’s is a child of those wonderful 80s.
The work on the dialogues of both characters, and even in their adaptation for the translation of the subtitles, is a surreptitious detail that is worth stopping at. In addition to the costumes and his prim mannerism, Edwin uses classic expressions that become a perfect contrast to Charles’s vigorous and carefree attitude.
The thanks to Steve Yockeywriter and showrunner of the series along with Beth Schwartz, in whose filmography it is also—drum roll— Supernatural. That the series has changed the original age of its protagonists, who in the comic are 12 years old, to their twenties has not been a coincidence.
It is much closer to the adult range that the now legendary Dean and Sam Winchester also faced, despite the irreverent tone with which they permeate the entire first season to lessen the blow, and also to the almost adolescent melodrama of love affairs with a clever addition “queer” for the now more adult Edwin.
The Dead Detectives It is a creative, supposedly silly and addictively superficial series. The harmony with which they develop characters and plots becomes so light that their episodes are very easy to digest, with the inevitable risk that this entails: their almost non-existent transcendence.
The first season expands the Sandman universe from a less fundamental perspective; at once as engaging as the TikTok video carousel, but also unmemorable once you have scrolled to the next one.
And there is nothing wrong with that. Dead Detectives exploits youth concepts in the funniest way, it cares excessively about being “aesthetic”—my teenage cousins will be proud of this—and its actors blend in superbly with their characters. So why not swipe through each of its episodes at the same speed?
