The Sandman concludes with a special bonus episode that is thankfully better than the drudgery that was the end of its second season. That said, Netflix’s mostly decent adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Chris Bachelo’s Death: The High Cost Of Living can still feel, unfortunately, a few decades too late.
Published in 1993 as a three-issue limited series, the original work is an entertaining story but not one that’s incredibly novel. Death walking briefly among us as a mortal is a popular conceit, and the Netflix adaptation makes some changes to the main characters that end up lessening the tale’s impact.
Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) befriends the suicidal Sexton (Colin Morgan), who learns something about himself and life in general. The manic pixie dream girl trope has its share of issues, but it was less of a documented cliché when the comic was released. And this adaptation doesn’t challenge this dynamic in any meaningful way for the modern setting.
In Gaiman’s original story, Sexton is 16 years old, angsty, rude, and willfully miserable—in other words, a fairly normal teenager. Here, he’s a full-grown man in his thirties. This was perhaps a necessary change because Howell-Baptiste’s Death is also a full-grown woman and not a quirky 16-year-old girl like she is in the comics. There’s no hint of actual romantic interest between the two, though, so the show’s creators could have kept Sexton a teenager. It would’ve helped his character or at least justified some of his negative traits. He’s almost a total narrative rock, who the vivacious Death drags from place to place, while he mostly complains. Amazingly, his dour, self-pitying personality manages to impress a young woman named Jackie (Ellie Mejia). It’s as if Sexton has traveled to the Dreaming.
When the episode starts, Sexton has a serious accident that viewers might assume is fatal once Death arrives. Her appearance in the waking world is rarely good news. However, she quickly reassures Sexton that this is her day off. She invites Sexton back to her flat to tend to his injuries and fix his shirt. (It was his pants in the book, which was funnier and more flirtatious.) Death explains that every 100 years, she spends one day as a human. This helps her fully appreciate life. In the comic, she lives in a ramshackle apartment that contains a picture of Death (a.k.a. Didi) with a family who never existed. It’s the universe’s way of making her feel comfortable, she says. Netflix removes the photo but keeps the line, so it seems as if the universe is just responsible for her spacious apartment in London’s hip Shoreditch neighborhood.
The script also cuts out a humanizing moment for Sexton, when he shows genuine concern for this strange person who claims she’s Death and suggests that she seeks help. The TV Sexton doesn’t believe she’s Death, either, but he doesn’t try to assist her. He just leaves, annoyed. That’s when he encounters Mad Hettie (Clare Higgins), who forces him back to Death’s flat and threatens to kill him if she doesn’t locate her missing soul. She’d kept it hidden so Death could never take it, but now she’s forgotten where it is. Death agrees to find it for her, dragging Sexton along for the adventure he refuses to actually enjoy.
In a story involving a boring stiff and the beautiful eccentric who likes him anyway, the stiff should actually want something—anything—even if it’s a dull pursuit, like the old dinosaur bones in Bringing Up Baby. Sexton is a passive, unwilling observer. Death and Sexton end up at a nightclub—its own form of death—where they bump into Sexton’s flatmate and her girlfriend. This is also where Sexton meets Jackie, and Death proves a capable winglady but not the best judge of character. She goes dancing with club bartender Theo (Jonno Davies), who invites her on a private tour of the club, but it’s all a trick. He knows who she is and steals her ankh necklace, assuming this will give him power over life and death. But the necklace itself has no powers—and it’s not even that nice of a piece.
The irony, of course, is that Theo covets a power he already possesses. Death herself lacks free will. Like her Endless family, she is defined by her duties, which drive her. She can’t choose anything else. She quickly corrects Sexton when he assumes she actively kills people. That’s a choice she can never make. Yet, while human, she can make decisions that harm others.
After escaping Theo, Death buys a new necklace as well as jewelry containing Mad Hettie’s soul—a resolution that’s heartbreaking. When her 24 hours are finally up, Didi dies and wakes to meet Death, a moment Howell-Baptiste makes both tragic and uplifting. In the book, Sexton learns to enjoy life by falling in love with Death. Alas, there’s no such poetic irony here. Death leaves Sexton with a happy ending that he does nothing to earn.
Stray observations
- • Death tells Sexton she’s only a few hours old, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense. She’s existed for the entirety of human existence so she’d had quite a few days off by now. She should have a handle on life and even some favorite spots, like someone who goes to Disneyland every year. She acts like this is her first time, though, so maybe her experience isn’t cumulative.
- • People can’t resist giving Death free food and taxi rides. Come to think of it, that’s probably not the best example of the typical human experience. It’s like the gorgeous celebrity who raves about how wonderful it is to live in New York City, but she has an amazing apartment and never has to stand in line for anything.
- • Even in human form, Death demonstrates a Santa Claus-like level of omniscience about the people she meets and their lives, but she doesn’t immediately deduce Theo’s true intentions.
- • Death tells Sexton, “It wasn’t the day I wanted, but it was probably the day I needed.” This recalls a moment from “The Doctor’s Wife,” a 2011 Doctor Who episode written by Neil Gaiman, when the TARDIS—also briefly alive in human form—tells the Doctor that she doesn’t always take him where he wants to go but she always takes him where he needs to go.
