Neil Gaiman’s Dead Boy Detectives is getting the Netflix treatment
After The Sandman, the streaming platform expands its Neil Gaiman universe with another adaptation in April
TV News Netflix
When it comes to live-action adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s beloved comics, fans are feasting. Over on Prime Video is Good Omens, which was thankfully renewed for a third and final season. Netflix, meanwhile, is helming a Gaiman-verse of sorts by adding Dead Boy Detectives to its lineup in April, as the streaming platform revealed today while announcing its spring slate.
The fantastical horror YA series is based on DC Comics’ graphic novels of the same name. It follows, as the title suggests, dead kids who turn to crime-solving. Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) are teens who run a detective agency; the catch is that they’re ghosts trying to escape a life in Hell. So, with the help of a clairvoyant, Crystal (Kassius Nelson), they remain on Earth to unravel weird supernatural cases.
Dead Boy Detectives is part of The Sandman universe. The latter, of course, got its TV treatment in 2022, complete with a stacked cast including Tom Sturridge, Boyd Holbrook, Gwendoline Christie, David Thewlis, and Vivienne Acheampong. Season two is already in production. Also of note: be careful not to confuse this series with Max’s Doom Patrol, whose third season (airing in 2021) also featured Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland as regular characters, played by different actors. In fact, Dead Boy Detectives was originally meant for Max before it moved to Netflix last year. Streamers work in mysterious ways.
The Flight Attendant’s Steve Yockey developed the series, and he is co-showrunning it with Beth Schwartz of The CW’s Arrowverse fame. The ensemble cast also includes Briana Cuoco, Ruth Connell, Jenn Lyon, Yuyu Kitamura, Lukas Gage, and Lindsey Gort.
Dead Boy Detectives premieres on April 25 on Netflix.
6 Comments
I the show when I thought it was the spin-off of that Doom Patrol episode.
It is. The Doom Patrol was introduced as a backdoor pilot from the Titans TV show, with some recasting before the show went into production. That’s the same thing here. “Dead Patrol” was actually co-written by the showrunner for DBD and by one of the producers. They have simply recast the three main parts from that episode, especially as the actors had aged in the meantime, but the actress playing Night Nurse is the same. And the goal was to present it as a DP spin-off, except that the main show was canceled in the meantime, to make way for the DCU. Now, they’re presenting it as its own thing on a different streaming service, but the first season was produced as part of the whole Doom Patrol “universe”.
Well, the cast is what I enjoyed about that episode.
Call me when we get a……movie.
Sigh, that show was too good for this world….and also way too slow with its release schedule to maintain an audience but mainly the first thing.
The photo is unfortunate, it shows us grad students instead of high school students.