payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
I found plenty of mean-spiritedness in Sandman. Maybe even worse than anything we have seen in GoT. I think this might be a taste perspective on your part. Though, I do agree that these are all high quality well executed programs with HotD coming in third for my tastes.Yeah, this show really doesn't benefit from being released so near to Rings of Power and Sandman, both of which are much, much better shows.
And I think the mean-spiritedness of this franchise may be a mismatch for a larger part of the audience nowadays, given how many mean-spirited years we've just been through.
It's not bad, but it's definitely in third place up against two other titans of fantasy, both of which have shows out this summer. It'd be better up against Wheel of Time, but I can't imagine Amazon cooperating with that match up.
The fantasy genre is getting difficult to parse. Sandman is clearly going with a dark fairy tale angle, RoP a high epic fantasy with the world at stake, and HotD palace intrigue slow burn into high fantasy. Violence and sexuality in RoP are dramatic high notes, in HotD they are ambiance, and in Sandman they are emotionally dramatic. They are more disparate than would seem at first glance, and shouldn't be compared so lightly, IMO.