Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives never lets you forget that it’s about two boys who turned to detective work after they died. Thankfully, this is no slow building Surf Dracula situation: When we meet stuffy Edwin (George Rexstrew) and the rowdier Charles (Jayden Revri), the two deceased British teenagers have been assisting their fellow ghosts with unresolved matters for decades. Viewers are dropped right into the adventures and afterlife of the characters first introduced by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner in the pages of The Sandman #25 – though it isn’t long before their routine is disrupted by the arrival of amnesiac psychic Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson). Dead Boy Detectives quickly makes clear its overall approach is whimsical horror, pitting its central trio against all sorts of ghosts, demons, and other macabre threats with a winking, humorous tone. On that front, it’s entertaining, garnering laughs with characters like an apologetic emissary of Hell or a bizarre, anime-inspired tree with giant teeth named, naturally, Teeth Face.
Helping Crystal – who’s been suffering from a wee bit of possession – brings the Dead Boys to a small town in the Pacific Northwest (played by Canada – this is a Greg Berlanti-produced DC adaptation, after all). They stick around these overcast environs, continuing to take cases and contending with the ongoing looming threats of a witch named Esther (Jenn Lyon) and the supernatural bureaucrat known as Night Nurse (Ruth Connell). Lyon and Connell provide tremendous fun as these decidedly determined characters, who each have their own reasons for entrapping Edwin and Charles. Lyon’s Esther is casually cruel and humorously flippant, with Lyon bringing a gleefully malicious vibe to the character that feels like she’d make a great sparring partner for Jennifer Tilly on Chucky. Connell is pitch perfect as uber disciplinarian Night Nurse, who is all about maintaining the rules of the afterlife and furious the Dead Boy Detectives have broken so many of them.
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There are some jokes the show hits one too many times, though. In this world, ghosts can communicate with cats, but the fact that every cat they meet speaks in a grumpy, foul-mouthed voice wears thin – as do Lukas Gage’s appearances as the human form of the Cat King. He’s an enjoyable scenery-chewer, but his scenes grow repetitive with time. Similarly, a couple of snarky and insulting miniature Sprites are initially amusing before suffering from diminishing returns in later episodes.
Other supporting characters also feel adrift. Yuyu Kitamura is very funny and endearing as Crystal’s amusingly direct neighbor, Niko. Yet despite learning all the secrets of the Dead Boy Detectives fairly early on, she rarely joins their investigations the way Crystal does. Kitamura gets a laugh by acknowledging that fact, but it does nothing to change how needlessly superfluous her character sometimes feels. More obviously incidental is the living girls’ landlord, Jenny (Briana Cuoco), whose ample screen time contributes very little to the overall story, despite Cuoco’s likable performance – most noticeable during a bizarrely random and extraneous subplot about the tattooed butcher’s secret admirer.
Rexstrew and Revri have a nice chemistry together as the odd couple at the center of the story, and Dead Boy Detectives gets decent mileage out of a burgeoning love triangle between their characters and Nelson’s. Charles flirts with Crystal, while Edwin hides long-simmering romantic feelings for his partner-in-crime-solving. Nelson meshes well as the new member of the team, but she’s also unfortunately saddled with an arc about the demon (David Iacono) that once possessed Crystal. It’s dull, and always drags the show down.
Like many 20something actors playing teens on TV, the leads in Dead Boy Detectives don’t really look like 16-year-olds. though hHere, it makes sense you’d hire actors who won’t look dramatically older in potential future seasons, given that they’re supposed to be unaging ghosts. But it’s funny – and often amusingly distracting – how frequently the dialogue hammers home that Charles, Edwin, Crystal, and Niko could all still be in high school. (If two of them had a pulse, at least.) When Jenny repeatedly calls Crystal “Kid,” it’s very apparent we’re watching a 35-year-old actor say this to someone nine years her junior, and it feels like the show would be better served by not drawing our attention to the cast members’ ages at all.
Ruth Connell’s presence reflects the strange development of Dead Boy Detectives. Originally ordered as a sorta-kinda spinoff of Doom Patrol (where Connell first played Night Nurse, though other actors appeared as Charles, Edwin and Crystal) for Max, it was sold to Netflix along the way and has been retrofitted into the universe of the streamer’s Sandman series. Appearances by The Sandman’s Death (Kirby) and other familiar faces make it harder to not compare the two series and Dead Boy Detectives just isn’t as strong as The Sandman, despite Neil Gaiman’s involvement in both. Dead Boy Detectives can’t match The Sandman’s dramatic heights, and even when it gets more serious, it often feels superficial and try-hard. Sometimes it hits its “isn’t this all wacky and weird?” marks, but other times it feels a bit leaden.
Season 1 thrives at its mid-point, when it emphasizes procedural mysteries over serialized storytelling. The third episode, about a family reliving their own murder again and again, is a highlight that leans into pure horror. Though the finale is just so-so, it’s preceded by a strong penultimate episode that fleshes out Edwin and Charles’ personal histories while one of the Dead Boys sets out on a trippy and harrowing journey to save his partner. There are times when the special effects are clearly straining against a limited budget, but there’s impressive and creative imagery throughout the season, including a sort of corpse garden, cool creature designs like the aforementioned Teeth Face, and a couple of backstories rendered in different animation styles.
