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- Netflix
- Apr 14, 2024
- Netflix
- Apr 14, 2024
Summary Ghosts and best friends Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) solve supernatural cases with the help of clairvoyant Crystal (Kassius Nelson) and her friend Niko (Yuyu Kitamura) in this series based on characters created for DC by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner.
- Netflix
- Apr 14, 2024
- Netflix
- Apr 14, 2024
Dead Boy Detectives
Season 1
Season Premiere: Apr 14, 2024
65
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
tbd
Summary Ghosts and best friends Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) solve supernatural cases with the help of clairvoyant Crystal (Kassius Nelson) and her friend Niko (Yuyu Kitamura) in this series based on characters created for DC by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner.
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Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 19 Critic Reviews
65
58% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
42% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 19 Critic Reviews
65
58% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
42% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
The mysteries are inventive, but it’s the characters and their relationships that keep the show addictive, especially when it comes to Edwin and Charles.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There’s stuff to like here: The White Lotus’s Lukas Gage is plenty of fun as one of the show’s more memorable villains, the Cat King, who seems to have burst straight out of a cursed production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber show, and Rexstrew and Revri are charming leads. But it’s not enough to make you want to stick with the convoluted, but somehow still predictable, plotting.
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