Dead Boy Detectives

Death is frightening and strange, but Dead Boy Detectives finds a melancholy sort of fun in two ghosts still so full of life they refuse to let it go.

But if there’s nothing groundbreaking here, it’s all uncommonly well done — cleverly written, smartly cast, sensitively played, marvelously realized.

Entertaining, often quite weird, and strangely charming by turns, Dead Boy Detectives doesn’t quite reach the emotional and narrative heights of The Sandman. But it’s a good time in its own right, and its existence serves as an important reminder that there is (so much) more to this fictional world than Tom Sturridge’s Dream, and plenty of hidden corners worth exploring.

Dead Boy Detectives takes the Sandman universe in a thrilling new YA-led direction that infuses old-school case-of-the-week storytelling with a modern spin that's anything but ghastly.

What is consistent is how well constructed the series is otherwise. Its principals’ overarching narratives build through each episode’s freestanding mystery. The show is really about Edwin, Charles and Crystal’s tough, horrifying journey toward their better selves. These are basically moral tales with well-executed gore and gags. There’s no firmer foundation for good ghost stories.

The series isn’t flawless, but it is ridiculous in the right way. And as with other Gaiman adaptations like Good Omens and Lucifer, genuine emotions lie under the veneer of eccentric, awkward comedy and situations.

Despite our reservations, Dead Boy Detectives is mostly fun to watch, and the flaws we saw in the first episode might be smoothed over as the season goes along.

The rules of “Dead Boy Detectives” are never quite clear; the ghosts can lift corporeal objects, but can’t feel physical touch. Yet the show is so packed with idiosyncratic archetypes, from a walrus-turned-man named Tragic Mick (Michael Beach) to immortal witch Esther (Jenn Lyon), that the haphazard, stitched-together quality becomes part of the charm.

The series might not inspire quite that level of devotion, at least in its solid-but-not-sensational first season. But it’s the sort of consistently likable amusement that in Charles’s 1980s heyday might have become long-running appointment viewing — and that we in the 2020s get to enjoy as a zippy, satisfying binge.

“Dead Boy Detectives,” which seems ready-made for fans of Netflix’s “Wednesday,” is fine but unexceptional, like a lot of Netflix fare these days.

I’m never going to be the one to complain about a showcase for supernatural mysteries. I do wish, however, that “Dead Boy Detectives” had more focus, and that some of those mysteries were more compelling. And someone just give the Cat King his own show.

It is good escapist fun. It gets the job of entertaining done so efficiently that it seems wrongheaded to want it to be better.

The more serialized aspects are hit-or-miss, with some subplots and characters feeling extraneous and meandering, even while strong performances help elevate the threats posed by its villains.

Something tells me most people who watch the show will agree we could have left the cringey exclamations of "brills!" out of the script. Despite this, and some characters who didn't pack as much of a punch as they could have, the series has heart and depth, and it's a convincing expansion of the Sandman universe, which is more than can be said for many recent spin-offs.

Despite its faults, "Dead Boy Detectives" seems dead set on providing passable, spectral entertainment even for those unfamiliar with the series (both of them) on which it's based. It's just a shame it doesn't feel like it has an identity of its own.

That the series begins without an origin story, with details dribbling out as the narrative flows, is calculated to distract from what a viewer instinctively needs and which isn't much to ask for—a set of guidelines about the who, the where and the what. The Dead Boys are entertaining, sure. But enough with the questions.

The main foursome is likable enough screen company, but they are hamstrung by weak writing.