How fantasy TV roared back in 2022 with ‘The Sandman,’ ‘House of the Dragon’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Power’

If you were to think of high profile television shows as stars shooting through the pop culture firmament, then the appearance of three much anticipated fantasy series within a month of each other could be seen as portentous.

At the very least, fantasy TV is dominating the small-screen conversation right now in a way it hasn’t since “Game of Thrones” ended in 2019.

“If you’re a fan of fantasy or if you’re just a fan of good storytelling, this is a boom time for you,” said Cynthia Addai-Robinson, who plays a queen regent in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” during a Television Critics Association Q&A.

That series, based on appendices and other snatches of text in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” novels, premieres Sept. 2 on Prime Video.

It was preceded on Aug. 5 by “The Sandman” on Netflix, an adaptation of the beloved Neil Gaiman comic book series, and last Sunday on HBO by “House of the Dragon,” a prequel to “Game of Thrones,” based on the George R.R. Martin “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels.

All three shows have been years in the making; all three carry the ponderous weight of fan expectations but also the opportunity that comes from being linked to much loved literary properties.

Allan Heinberg understands those expectations. He is not only one of the creators of “The Sandman” series, alongside Gaiman and David S. Goyer, he is a long-time admirer of the comics.

“I have been living with ‘The Sandman’ now for 34 years as a fan,” Heinberg said in a phone interview. He’s been living with the idea of putting the comics on the screen for almost as long, about 25 years.

Heinberg called “The Sandman,” published between 1989 and ’96, “a very unique and unusual and powerful and inspiring work (created out of) love, and curiosity about the way life works and the way death works, and about how we love one another.”

Interestingly, he doesn’t see “The Sandman” as a fantasy series, but rather as a relationship drama and family saga, although he acknowledged some of it takes place in fantastical realms.

Likewise, Patrick McKay said he and co-creator J.D. Payne don’t think of “The Rings of Power” as a fantasy drama in the “Game of Thrones” mould. But it and “Sandman” certainly fit the bill if you define fantasy TV as creating worlds outside the rules of everyday human experience and telling complex, serialized stories within those worlds, which is the definition put forth by Robert Thompson, a TV and pop culture professor, and director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

Fantasy has “got some element of the paranormal in it, things that don’t happen actually on planet Earth, which makes it share some territory dramaturgically with the likes of science fiction,” Thompson said in a phone interview.

And those things make sense “as long as you’re willing to go with the fact that it is a parallel world and not the one we live in, one that has orcs and elves and magic and all of that.”

Clearly, the fact that books like Tolkien’s have been avidly devoured for decades — the “Rings” trilogy was first published in 1954 and ’55 — shows consumers of culture are willing to make that leap.

But “Game of Thrones” primed TV audiences for the kinds of big-budget fantasy spectacles getting green-lit today, not just “Rings” and “Dragon” and “The Sandman,” but titles like “The Witcher,” “The Wheel of Time” and even “Stranger Things.”

“I think HBO took an enormous risk on ‘Game of Thrones’ originally,” Heinberg said. “And the response indicated that there was a huge appetite and a passion, and it absolutely made it OK for streamers to invest that kind of time and money telling those kinds of stories because they saw evidence that an audience existed, a very coveted audience.

“So I am profoundly grateful to ‘Game of Thrones’ and the success of that show.”

Thompson, however, argued that though “Thrones” made it easier to sell fantasy series, “it’s an example of a trend that was already happening and going to happen” — fuelled by extraordinary developments in computer-generated and digital technology; the rise of serialization in the 1980s with shows like “Dallas” and “Hill Street Blues”; and the emergence of the anti-hero as a mark of so-called prestige TV, the Tony Sopranos, Walter Whites and Vic Mackeys.

Bad, or at least morally ambiguous, characters abound in shows like “Thrones,” which told the story of noble families fighting for control of a vaguely medieval kingdom, and an apocalyptic battle for existence between humans and supernatural beings known as White Walkers.

Its prequel, “House of the Dragon,” follows the ancestors of “Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen, a dragon-taming royal family plunged into civil war. And it has evidently benefited from “Thrones’” success, with nearly 10 million viewers watching the premiere on HBO and HBO Max in the U.S., according to Variety, the largest premiere audience in HBO’s history.

“Rings,” meanwhile, takes place thousands of years before the events of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” books, and encompasses elves, dwarves, harfoot (prehistoric hobbits), men and other creatures. It is said to be the most expensive TV series ever made.

“The Sandman,” on the other hand, is set mainly in the present day but focuses on a supernatural being known as Dream, lord of dreams and nightmares, who’s on a quest to repair the damage done to humanity after he was held prisoner for a century.

The goal of all these shows, naturally, is to snag viewers beyond what Thompson called the “guaranteed audience” already familiar with the source material.

Heinberg said the most challenging part of making “The Sandman” was staying true to that source material while also making “transporting television, both for long-time hardcore fans and for people who had never read the books.”

Whether he and his co-creators succeeded is still being debated by those fans as well as TV critics, but “The Sandman” was holding at No. 1 on Netflix’s global Top 10 list three weeks after its debut. (Gaiman told fans on Twitter that might not be enough to guarantee a second season, noting it’s “a really expensive show.”)

Appealing to viewers not already familiar with the “Lord of the Rings” was also a preoccupation for McKay and Payne of “The Rings of Power”: for those viewers, “we hope that the human drama of it or sometimes non-human drama of it will be as engaging and accessible to you as to maybe a super fan,” McKay said.

One popular theory contends that fantasy TV appeals to viewers because it enables them to escape their day-to-day reality, but Thompson takes issue with that.

“If you’re going to escape … are you really going to want to escape with all of the horrible things that happen in a lot of these (shows)?” he said.

“‘Game of Thrones’ might be a different world, but it looks just about as ugly as the one I’m in. That theory would more argue for the presence of shows like ‘Ted Lasso.’”

Steve Toussaint, who plays Lord Corlys Velaryon in “House of the Dragon,” wouldn’t disagree it’s full of unpleasant things, but suggested the fantasy elements help keep the ugliness palatable.

“Dragon” is “about this family tearing itself apart,” he said in an interview. “It’s about ambition, jealousy, conspiracy. People get their heads chopped off as well. But I think we’re able to look at human behaviour at one remove … People still don’t like each other and so forth, but there are dragons.”

It’s a balancing act, however, between creating a world far enough removed from this one that catastrophic events don’t hit too close to home, but not so far removed that viewers can’t relate to the characters.

As Toussaint put it, “If you don’t believe in the character that we’re portraying, if you don’t buy in and have some empathy, all the swords and dragons won’t save you.”

McKay shared a similar thought during the Television Critics Q&A.

“I think when you’re telling a story in a world as vast and complex and sometimes political and sometimes poetic as this one, it’s really important to keep yourself anchored to a mother and daughter, or a couple of friends, or a father-son, or a husband and wife, as opposed to a Númenórean or a dwarf or an elf.”

Ismael Cruz Cordova, who plays silvan elf Arondir in “The Rings of Power,” summed it up most affectingly:

“I grew up in Puerto Rico, grew up in houses with mud floors and experienced so many hardships in my life. And every time that I saw Tolkien — because I saved all my money to buy my first DVD, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (movie) — I felt myself in there. I felt that spiritual and emotional connection, especially with the elves coming from the mountains, I found a little home there.”

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

SHARE: