25 Most Hotly Anticipated New TV Shows Of 2020

The comic book that made Neil Gaiman’s name three decades ago is finally coming to the screen.

The Sandman begins as Morpheus, the personification of Dream, is imprisoned by a mortal magician for a century and escapes to slowly recover his kingdom and his power… but it swells into all kinds of shapes and zig zags in all sorts of directions after that, and God alone knows what the story will look like after it’s been adapted for television.

Stories of the stop-start development of The Sandman have been coming up in the media for a quarter of a century, most recently with Joseph Gordon-Levitt determined to try and turn the 75-issue story into a single feature-length movie.

Thankfully, calmer heads prevailed, and the project now - at long last! - has the green light at Netflix as a television show, with Allan Heinberg running the show. Heinberg, writer of 2017’s Wonder Woman screenplay, is also an experienced comic book writer, and seems the perfect choice to bring Gaiman’s weird and wonderful story-about-stories to life.

This also seems the best possible time for the project to finally get the go ahead, given that Gaiman himself is hotter than he’s ever been before. The runaway success of American Gods (based on a Gaiman novel and with significant input from Gaiman himself) and Good Omens (based on a novel co-written by Gaiman and created, written and run by Gaiman) has made The Sandman, an astonishing work of sublime depth, probably the most hotly anticipated show of 2020.