Written by Neil Gaiman And David S. Goyer And Allan Heinberg
Directed by Mike Barber
Morpheus (to Lucienne): "I will not have dreams and nightmares preying on the waking world. I will bring them all back. I made this realm once, Lucienne. I will make it again."
And here we have the comic that seemed to be the hardest to film. This series has been routed about for years but finally Neil Gaiman with the combined help of both Davis S. Goyer and Allan Heinberg have managed to bring this series to life and this opening episode kicked things off on a glorious note.
Lord Morpheus (Tom Sturridge), also known as Dream or the Sandman. He's one of the Endless, the controller of both dreams and nightmares and ruler of the Dreaming. He's also in the hunt for a rogue nightmare named the Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook) who has taken to terrorizing the waking world. Unfortunately for Morpheus, someone interrupted his mission in a big way.
The someone in question being an occultist named Roderick Burgess (Charles Dance) who was trying to capture Death in order to bring his favourite son, Randall back to life. However his least favourite son, Alex (Laurie Kynaston) eventually became tired of his father's abusive behaviour and wound up killing him while also continuing to make his father's mistake and not releasing Morpheus back into the world.
It's a mistake that cost the world with many falling into a deep sleepy sickness and many others unable to sleep as a consequence of Dream's entrapment. Also, Alex really messed up by killing Morpheus's raven, something which the latter took into account big time when deciding on an appropriate punishment for Alex before his reunion with loyal librarian Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong).
The last moments of this opening episode saw Dream facing a few harsh reality checks. Notably that many of his subjects had abandoned him (except Lucienne) while his Realm was slowly crumbling around him. With his vital trinkets removed from him by Burgess and later the latter's mistress, Ethel Cripps (Niamh Walsh), Dream certainly has his work cut out for him if he wants to regain his former glory.
As for the Corinthian, he's aware that Dream has been released and while he was responsible for helping Burgess keeping his creator imprisoned for over a century, he's not that bothered by Morpheus on the loose. Instead he's too busy gouging out eyes of innocent men and talking about making the world in his image. Classic villain stuff basically but he does make for a suitably creepy baddie, especially when it's revealed he has teeth for eyes.
- There's a nice title sequence for the series but it's placed at the closing credits with only Dream, Corinthian, Lucienne and Matthew the Raven (Patton Oswalt) confirmed as regulars.
- A season trailer gave further looks into characters such as Johanna Constantine, Death, Desire, Despair, John Dee, Merv the Pumpkinhead to name a few.
- Tom Sturridge spent a lot of this episode naked and trapped in a glass cage before Morpheus's big escape.
- Chronology: Mostly 1916 and 1926 Wych Cross, England with a look into both London and Berlin not to mention 2022 towards the last few minutes of the episode.
Sleep Of The Just kicked off this dreamy series on something of a modest note. You get the rundown of who and what this world was all about with some strong performances from both less and guest characters here. It's safe to say that Netflix could be on to a winner here.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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