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Dead Boy Detectives takes place in the same universe as The Sandman, according to the premise, and that was a show I couldn’t get a handle upon, but I’ll give anything a try.
We get a brief pre-credits intro with some sort of creature chasing Edwin Paine (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), wearing a ‘cursed’ gas mask, but they’d be able to solve this more quickly if Charles used his backpack which can hold an infinite number of things (like ANY backpack in ANY videogame!), but forgot to bring it… D’oh!
To get from A to B, the pair often jump through weird portals or “mirror hopping” in a sort-of fast-travel system. Not much made sense as I watched this, but I figured… not that it’s meant to, of course.
Beyond this, for their first main case in this series, a teenage dead girl called Emma, who lived around the 1800s, wants their help to find her friend and medium, Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson – White Lines), and to find her, they wear unguessable disguises, the task being to take the demon out of her, and get her back to some sense of normality.
However, once she’s settled, there’s something about her that they’re not familiar with, initially, but you’ll see what that’s all about before they do.
In this universe, the Grim Reaper is female, there’s a flashback to Edwardian London, 1916, which shows us Charles ended up in a particular predicament I can’t get into here, although he will bleat on about it a fair bit, there’s humour in unlikely scenes, and one character uses the insult “you twats“, but phrasing it “twots“. Huh?
Dead Boy Detectives‘ opener is quite fast-moving, but overall, it was… okay, albeit certainly more fun and playful than The Sandman, which was just so serious.
All that said, as I got more and more into episode 2, I was losing more and more of a grip on what was going on and why, so I think I’ll have to bail quite early on. I guess I’m not part of the target audience, but since The Sandman has spawned this spin-off, it must have that audience.
Thanks to our friends at Netflix for the screener prior to release.
Dead Boy Detectives is not available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but is on Netflix from today.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 50-60 minutes per episode (8 episodes)
Release date: April 25th 2024
Studio: Netflix
Format: 2.39:1
Series Directors: Glen Winter, Andi Armaganian, Pete Chatmon, Cheryl Dunye, Lee Toland Krieger, Richard Speight Jr, Amanda Tapping
Characters: Neil Gaiman, Matt Wagner
Developed by: Steve Yockey
Writers: Steve Yockey, Cheech Manohar, Kristin Layne Tucker, Oscar Balderrama, Kelli Breslin, Joshua Conkel, Jeremy Kaufman, Kristy Lowrey, Ross Maxwell, Shoshana Sachi, Beth Schwartz, Ian Weinreich
Cast:
Edwin Paine: George Rexstrew
Charles Rowland: Jayden Revri
Crystal Palace: Kassius Nelson
Niko: Yuyu Kitamura
Jenny Green: Briana Cuoco
Esther Finch: Jenn Lyon
Cat King: Lukas Gage
David the Demon: David Iacono
Monty: Joshua Colley
Mick: Michael Beach
Grey Cat: André Sogliuzzo
Kingham: Max Jenkins
Litty: Caitlin Reilly
Maxine: Lindsey Gort
Night Nurse: Ruth Connell
Death: Kirby
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.