By: Alex Tilton

Back when I reviewed season 3 of ‘Shadows’ I said that while I didn’t know how many seasons of this masterpiece of dark comedy we would get, I hoped for six or seven. Midway through the current season (4) FX renewed it for both 5 and 6.

It was anything but guaranteed. Netflix has continued its grand tradition of TV infanticide and HBO’s new parent company is killing off properties left and right in a desperate bid to get out of debt. We no longer expect a show to get renewed just because it was good. We now expect them to get canceled for being anything less than a smash hit. If you’re not Squid Game, Stranger Things, House of the Dragon, or The Boys then your future is in considerable doubt.

But FX seems to know what it’s got on its hands with ‘Shadows’. The creators have retained their freedom to do unapologetically dark adult comedy, and they’ve given their writers and actors the freedom to deliver that comedy at its peak. Season 4 of ‘Shadows’ delivers much of the same as the past three seasons, essentially demolishing my fears that it would decline as so many other shows have done. This season did have one irritation though. Or at least it felt like it was going to.

Season 3 ended on a cliffhanger with the vampires going their separate ways to explore the world. So, I thought season 4 would be a radical departure with each of them doing their own thing. I was wrong.

The first episode of the new season hand waves the previous season’s ending but gets away with it without making me mad. They simply declare that the vampires' individual journeys didn’t work out so well and they all decided to say forget it and go back home. And if you know these characters then you know that this is exactly what they would do. Yes, it’s a cheap way of getting them all back together under more or less the same circumstances as before, but it works so well that I can’t hold it against them. Every episode is good, but my particular favorite is called ‘The Night Market’, because of how gleefully absurd and violent it is. I have no complaints; the show continues to be the standard to which other comedies aspire. Or should.

On the dramatic front, I watched season one of Sandman on Netflix. In spite of having a similarly devoted fanbase to Cowboy Bebop, Sandman avoided the fanboy wrath Cowboy Bebop suffered by (mostly) copying the graphic novel scene for scene. 

I’m not complaining exactly, it’s just that there aren’t any surprises. If you’ve read the comics, then you know precisely what’ll happen and when. It was, of course, done with a reverence for the source material and with superb casting, but still…I’d hoped for an interpretation rather than a remake

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But if this is what’ll get it renewed for season 2 then I’m down for it because season one was nearly flawless. The only real issue I had with it is that I happen to find Patton Oswalt annoying and choosing him to be Dream’s companion crow irritated me a lot. He also gets some hammy audience surrogate dialogue that took me out of the moment a few times. But it was necessary to keep newcomers to Sandman informed enough to follow the plot. 

The sky-high production costs that put Sandman in jeopardy of not getting a season 2 paid off visually and aesthetically. The thing is as visually glorious as any show you’re going to watch except possibly The Expanse. Tom Sturridge was a superb choice to play Dream, The Corinthian was flawlessly played by Boyd Holbrook, Vivienne Acheampong nailed the part of Lucienne and even the minor part of Fiddlers Green was perfectly filled by Stephen Fry. 

Nothing is certain given Netflix’s current financial problems but this show has as good a chance as any serious (and expensive) drama to continue and flourish. Maybe they can siphon off some Squid Game profits to keep it afloat. One can only hope.