I am sure plenty of viewers will love its more fantastical elements, from a battle of imaginations with Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie) to a cute mythical creature called Gregory, but I found its finest moments in the more human, conversational, emotional strands. Once the scene-setting and world-building has been done, it has the confidence to take its time over the big stuff. Partly, that is because the pace is meditative, not frantic. It all feels like rather a lot, but it works well.

Throughout the series, time flies, and slows, and we leap through different periods and cities and realms. For a while, the period setting feels a bit dark Downton Abbey, but it soon becomes clear that this is far too expansive to stick to one era or genre. Instead, he ends up with Dream, and traps him naked in a glass sphere in his basement. The magus wants to harness Death’s power to indulge in a spot of necromancy and revive his favourite son, who was killed in wartime. Sinister … Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess in episode one.

It begins in 1916, when Lord Morpheus, or Dream, or the Sandman, or Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, to give him his pedigree name (a sinewy Robert Smith type, played with breathy sulkiness by Tom Sturridge), is mistakenly captured by Charles Dance’s sinister – and Dance is very good at sinister – magus. It’s that kind of show, and it immerses you in its world immediately, setting the Sandman off on his journey of discovery. The notes I took when watching include “Patton Oswalt is crow?”. The first couple of episodes exist firmly in the realm of fantasy. With its debut season, The Sandman can stand proudly among them, albeit as their moody goth older brother.

Yet this is the era of megabudget fantasy television, with the imminent arrival of a small-screen Lord of the Rings and the return of the Game of Thrones universe in House of the Dragon. It is a big, bold story of gods and demons, so deep and rich that the idea of cramming its wonders into 10 episodes seems borderline ludicrous. I t has taken 30 years for an adaptation of The Sandman (Netflix), Neil Gaiman’s celebrated comic-book series, to make it to the screen, and little wonder.

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