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Adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s works never usually take themselves very seriously, because Gaiman himself likes to write stories that are as much about wit as they are about supernatural phenomenon. Imagine, though, a Gaiman story being adapted by the Greg Berlanti production machine. That’s what we get with Netflix’s new series, which was originally developed by Max.
Opening Shot: “LONDON, ENGLAND.” Two teenagers fall out of the sky and start running down a street. One wonders why the ghost that’s chasing them has left the museum that he’s supposedly haunting.
The Gist: These two teens can see ghosts because they’re ghosts themselves. Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) died decades apart — Edwin in 1916, Charles in the ’80s — but became best friends in death, and in 1990 they founded the Dead Boy Detective Agency. Their clients are other ghosts, who hire them to find apparitions and help them get to the afterlife.
In the case we find them in, for instance, they manage to get the ghost they’re after, but through the mirrors they can transport through, they inadvertently lead him to their office. That’s where Death (Kirby) finds him to take him to the afterlife. But George and Charles stand on the window ledge; they would rather avoid Death and the afterlife and continue to help ghosts on Earth.
A little ghostly girl comes into the agency, looking to hire the boys to find an actual live human; a medium named Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson) that she plays with, but has seemed to be possessed lately. Literally possessed; a demon has entered her and made her behavior erratic. The boys, using some clever earthly disguises, manage to follow Crystal to the tube and use their many tools to violently eject the demon from her boday.
One problem: The demon, which Crystal calls David (David Iacono), has stolen a fair amount of her memories. Over Edwin’s objections, Charles invites her to stay with them. As she goes through their mail (yes, they get mail), she sees a poster for a missing child in Port Townsend, Washington. She insists that the three of them go to the Pacific Northwest to try to find the girl. Charles convinces Edwin to go, using Death’s visit to their office as the key reason they should get away for awhile.
In Port Townsend, Crystal finds a room over a butcher shop owned by Jenny Green (Briana Cuoco), a butcher who emphatically cuts her meat. She eventually meets her neighbor Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), and is enchanted. As they search for the girl, we find out how Edwin died, and why he stayed in Hell for 70 years due to a “clerical error” before Charles got him out. We also find out just how Crystal got possessed by David the Demon, leading Edwin to lose a bit of trust in her. They encounter talking cats, and a witch named Esther Finch (Jenn Lyon) that stays young by feeding on the vitality of children.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Dead Boy Detectives is based on the DC comic series by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner, which is part of the Sandman Universe; it was adapted for TV by Steve Yockey, and it certainly has the quippiness of his previous series, The Flight Attendant. The tone and overall vibe of the show approaches the Arrowverse series that dominated the CW for years, which is an indication of the influence of EPs Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter.
Our Take: Dead Boy Detectives is a show that’s as much a light mystery series that doesn’t take itself seriously as it is a show about the supernatural. While there are many continuing storylines that will underpin the episodic mysteries that Edwin, Charles, Crystal and Niko will solve, the show is very much designed to be a case-of-the-week format.
There certainly is potential for a fun “Scooby gang” to develop between the two ghost boys, their clairvoyant friend and the anime-loving neighbor, but the first episode felt like it was bogged down in quippiness, with everyone breathlessly spewing out rapid-fire dialogue instead of letting a scene breathe. There were times, for instance, where it absolutely felt like Nelson, playing the American Crystal, was straining to hold back her native British accent against the onslaught of words.
We just don’t quite have a handle on what this show’s world is going to be and what its rules are. The boys seem to be able to interact with the physical world, and even put on disguises that make them visible to humans, but they can transport through mirrors, as well. There are times when it’s acknowledged that Crystal looks like she’s talking to herself, at least from the perspective of other humans, but others where she’s talking to the boys in a public space and not one person around her seems to be fazed by it.
In an effort to be funny and stylish, it feels like Yockey is sacrificing actual character development and a good sense of the world around these characters. Some of that may come later; we’re especially looking forward to seeing how Charles died — the indication is that it happened during some sort of boarding school hazing incident — and how Crystal deals with Dave the demon holding her memories. But what we got from the first episode was a mostly-confusing episodic mystery, lots of dialogue and not enough information about the main characters to latch onto.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: In the “Afterlife Lost & Found Department,” a woman is alerted to the boys’ presence on Earth. She picks up pictures of them and says, “Found you naughty boys, didn’t I?”
Sleeper Star: It will be interesting to see what Niko, played by Yuyu Kitamura, brings to the team as she gets more involved with Crystal and the boys’ cases.
Most Pilot-y Line: Charles, who considers himself “the brawn” of the group, with Edwin being “the brains,” tries to get Edwin to spar with him. Edwin hits Charles’ hands, but not hard enough to even hurt a butterfly. Yet, when they fight Esther the witch later on, both seem to be physically engaged with her. Another little inconsistency that drives us a bit nuts.
Our Call: STREAM IT. 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.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
