I'm going to lay out my position here

1. I am not a big Neil Gaiman fan.
2. I have never read nor even seen cover art of the Sandman comics
3. I thought this show was pretty rubbish

Fair warning: many spoilers ahead

The show lost my goodwill in the very first episode, when the historical epidemic of encephalitis lethargic was attributed to the fact that Dream was imprisoned in some madman's basement. There was no narrative logic to this (if Dream's imprisonment caused humans to fall into a permanent state of sleepiness, why didn't this happen to everyone?) and it felt kind of offensive given that the tragedy of encephalitis lethargica was a real thing that happened to real people, as anyone who's read Oliver Sacks' Awakenings will know.

Secondly, Dream's imprisonment was supposed to be a really bad thing for the human world, but it had no impact on anything as far as I could see

The people in the 1920s segment spoke as if they'd come straight from 2022.

The dialogue was clunky and cliched

The CGI looked cheap

The show didn't make me care about any of its characters

The arc about the British princess seemed really juvenile, like the kind of thing a 16 year old fanfic author who fancies herself edgy and political would write

The narrative meandered all over the place and characters seemed to do things for no reason. Also, why did Lucifer's minion have to have a face like Gus Fring's after Hector Salamanca's wheelchair exploded? Why did the minion of hell have arrows sticking out of his back? Why did Dream have to kill the Gargoyle? Why?

I am normally all for gender and race swapping, but in this show it felt like it was being done very deliberately for brownie points, to pander to its audience. It felt cynical, and like an insult to my intelligence.

That's all I have right now. If fans of Gaiman/Sandman loved this show, I'd be interested in hearing your views.