Given the amount of exposition clunked out, the first episode of Dead Boy Detectives sure is confusing. But I think I have it worked out. There are two boys – best friends Charles (Jayden Revri) and Edwin (George Rexstrew). They are both dead – lippy Charles carked it in the 1980s, stiffly Edwardian Edwin in 1916. Somehow they are both still on Earth (though we learn that Edwin spent some time in hell before escaping) and are using their time to find souls trapped less happily here and release them. The first we meet is a maddened first world war soldier in a cursed gas mask they must slice off before Death (Kirby, formerly known as Kirby Howell-Baptiste). They always have to hide from Death lest she collect them too. They are actually dead boy detectives on the lam. Fortunately, they can jump into mirrors to escape and to travel. Charles also has a backpack that holds an infinite number of items, which is such a cheat by the creators that you can only applaud wildly. What else do you need to know? Oh, they can be hurt by iron. Iron’s a thing for them.
So now, on with the show! Which is aimed at a young audience, who should love it. It whips along and, after the confusing start, finds a clairvoyant and a groove that work brilliantly. The clairvoyant, Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson, with screen presence to burn) joins the pair after they release her from a demonic possession. She can’t remember a thing about herself but has a psychic vision that tells her where a missing child is being held, surrounded by black magic and supernatural horrors.
Off they must go, via ordinary means because Crystal can’t jump into mirrors, to that most classic of locations – the ordinary-looking small American town. Call it Tropeville. Soon they are tangling with a witch, Esther (Jenn Lyon, another wonderful turn that threatens to put the slightly bland central duo in the shade), who stays young by kidnapping girls, keeping them in a cupboard that contains a magical void and draining them of their vitality. The detectives and their psychic rescue the missing girl but Charles briefly possesses Esther in the process; this alerts the rotten jobsworths in the afterlife’s lost-and-found department and gives a clue to their location. A hunt is on that will provide the series arc beneath the case-of-the-week shenanigans.
And shenanigans there are aplenty. The Cat King (Lukas Gage) who rouses all sorts of uncomfortable questions within Edwin. Crystal’s pastels-puking neighbour Niko (Yuyu Kitamura, introducing a much-needed comedy note for those for whom Edwin and Charles’s laboured banter is not working), whose condition must be cured before she explodes. Spells galore. Talking animals. Ghost children with attitude. Lexicographical glasses. A light steampunk meets Heath Robinson aesthetic. And Crystal’s demon, David (David Iacono), has not gone away. A postman who finds them wherever they are to deliver the latest batch of letters begging for their help. And of course a magic shop, stuffed with literally enchanting artefacts (and run by a cursed walrus). Esther – and her familiar – remain bent on vengeance and a joy in every scene.
Dead Boy Detectives is based on characters created by Neil Gaiman and the showrunner is Steve Yockley, who produced Supernatural and gave us the pure adrenaline rush of The Flight Attendant. You need to lean into the show, get past the opening clumsiness then let the fun in as skeletons arise in woods, monsters, demons and surprisingly dangerous dandelion sprites are dispatched, and the whys and wherefores of the detectives’ own deaths and returns to Earth as ghosts are revealed. This is a romp. It’s not Buffy the Vampire Slayer, accruing more heft as it goes along, and you can sometimes feel the slight smuggery that I’m beginning to think is an inescapable element of anything Gaiman-related, but your mileage may vary.
It is good escapist fun. It gets the job of entertaining done so efficiently that it seems wrongheaded to want it to be better. But it gets close enough to being something great that you feel yourself urging it on, to develop the characters just a bit more, to make things just a bit wittier, thicken the stew, polish the script, find that alchemical something that will transform it into something more, and make the most of the opportunities offered by the setup and the growing agglomeration of fabulous turns such as Esther and the Cat King. But maybe I’m leaning in too far. Pull back and it is what it is and feels fine. I’ll happily watch every episode. Pretend I’m young again and that there’s time aplenty for all of this.
• Dead Boy Detectives is on Netflix.
