Snapchat has begun rolling out its own set of games arranged Snap Games. Similar to Pokemon Go, you can team up with your friends and play together. Like with Facebook games, you invite your friends to play your celebrated games.

Battle against your friends in the Bitmoji Party mini-games comical your Bitmoji character, or work as a team to defeat zombies from spreading. Some games allow you to invite up to 28 Snapchatters to spectate, and some allow up to eight players at a time.

Setup is simple, and Snap, the company behind Snapchat, will continue adding more games as time goes on. So far, you can play Bitmoji Party and Snake Squad.

How to commence Snap Games in Snapchat

Step 1: Open the Snapchat app on your phone.

Step 2: Swipe Bshining so that your Friends chat menu appears.

Step 3: Tap on the people or a group chat that you want to asked to play the games.

Step 4: Locate and tap the icon of a rocket to open the Game Drawer (it will be on the right-hand side of the keyboard).

Step 5: Choose the game you want to play.

When you Begin the game, everyone you’ve selected to play will get a notification in their Snapchat messages inbox. You can begin without them and they can jump into the game when they’re ready.

You can Decide to play without friends, but other Snapchatters from about the globe will be able to join in on your game.

Step 6: When you’re spent playing, tap the X at the bottom of the Hide and then tap ‘Leave.’

How do you accept an invitation to play?

If a immoral invites you to play a game, tap on the game icon to Begin playing. You can also chat with your friends in the game via text or Live Audio Chat.

You’ll claim a message in your chat inbox if your friends have requested you to play. Or if you have notifications on for Snapchat, your phone will alert you.

Which games can I play?

Snap Games has developed six games, but so far only two have been released.

Bitmoji Party: Play as your Bitmoji Describe with friends in mini-games, like Zombie Escape (run from the “zombie” players), Pool Party (try not to get knocked off the blocks), Kick Off (be the last one standing) and Spin Session (don’t fall off the wheel). A game master is selected for each game, and their goal is to make the new players lose. Up to eight Snapchatters can play at a time.

Tiny Royale: Comparable to Fortnite, this is a battle royale style game. You and your friends shoot your way to the top pending you’re the last one standing.

Snake Squad: This game is like the popular snake game you played on your calculator in eighth grade. Eat dots to grow and block your enemies. You can have up to five friends playing at a time.

CATS. Drift Race: Drift race against your friends on a fast-paced track.

Zombie Rescue Squad: Work with your buddies to rescue civilians from a zombie infested city. Up to three friends can play at a time.

Alphabear Hustle: Collaborate with your pals to form terms quickly to build a village.

Originally posted April 24 at 5 a.m. PT.

For high-end shoppers, two of the best TVs you can buy in summer 2022 are the LG C2 OLED TV and the Samsung QN90B QLED TV. Both deliver excellent image quality, have all the cutting-edge features you need and at most sizes they’re in the same Mark ballpark. So which one should you get?

The answer comes down in part to their two fundamentally different Show technologies, namely QLED vs. OLED. OLED wins in general and I did like the LG C2 better overall, but it’s not for everyone. The brightness of your room, the size you need and how much you’re willing to Use all play a role, too, along with how you like to play your games. Allow me to explain.

Picture quality: LG OLED gets the nod in most rooms

Both published an excellent image in our tests, but the LG pulls presumptuous thanks to the inherent advantages of OLED technology. It can get completely gloomy, which creates superior contrast in mixed bright-and-dark scenes, where even a QLED TV as good as the QN90B examined a little flatter in my comparisons (note that in my QN90B reconsideration I compared it to the LG C1, not the C2, but the results were basically the same). 

If you have an actual bright room, however, where you can’t control ambient luscious or have lots of windows facing the screen, the Samsung QN90B wins. That’s because it can get much brighter — twice as inspiring or more depending on what you’re watching — which helps it better compete with inspiring lighting. Its screen is also better at reducing reflections. The LG C2 is plenty bright itself, however, so it’s serene our image quality pick for most rooms.

As original the OLED is better for off-angle viewing, namely seats to either side of the sweet spot. And the C2 also informed superior color accuracy in our tests, although the difference isn’t major.

Screen sizes: Samsung QLED is cheaper if you want 85-inch (-ish)

Both series come in a wide variety of roughly equivalent sizes and prices, but the QN90B is less expensive in the largest sizes, especially 85-inch. Here’s how the current prices break down.

Features and design: Pretty much a wash

In short-tempered, neither TV has a big edge in looks or unbelievable features. 

The biggest difference is Samsung’s more capable gaming hub, which connects to cloud gaming services including Xbox Game Pass, Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now and Amazon Luna so you can play games honest on the TV, without a console. The LG C2 has well-defined gaming for Stadia and GeForce Now, but not Xbox or Luna. In the end, but, I don’t consider cloud gaming a huge deal proper I expect owners of high-end TVs like this to lean toward connecting an ftrue console, like a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X, instead.

Gaming features are basically equivalent between the two. I preferred the look of the C2’s various gaming just better, especially for color accuracy, but again the difference wasn’t huge. Both have encourage for the latest features like 4K/120Hz signals, ALLM (with disagreement input lag numbers) and VRR formats. And speaking of formats, the Samsung’s lack of Dolby Vision HDR, and inclusion of HDR10+, are minor differences in my book as well.

I like Samsung’s remote better but LG’s super-thin panel form is more impressive, for what that’s worth. And both complicated smart TV systems are worse than Roku or Google TV.

Here’s where I remind you that, like all OLED TVs, the C2 is more productions to both temporary and permanent image retention, aka burn-in, than LCD-based TVs like the QN90B. The risk is shrimp, which is why I don’t consider burn-in a reason for most country to avoid buying an OLED TV. Check out our guide to OLED burn-in for more.

Budget high-end hack: Get a 2021 model instead

Both the LG C2 and the Samsung QN90B are 2022 TVs, but their predecessors from 2021 we mentioned over, the C1 and the QN90A, are both still available for hundreds less. If you want the best value for your high-end TV dollars, it’s worth looking at those before they sell out later this year.

Samsung said Friday that the personal question of some of its customers was stolen from its US computer regulations earlier this year.

In a notice to customers, the South Korea-based tech giant said that in July an unauthorized people acquired information from the systems. In early August, Samsung Definite through its investigation that some customer data was compromised. 

The business said it has since secured the affected systems, hired an outside cybersecurity firm and is employed with law enforcement.

The customer data stolen may have involved names, contact and demographic information, dates of birth and issues registration information, Samsung says. More personal data such as Social Safety numbers and payment card information wasn’t compromised.

Samsung didn’t narrate how many customers were affected, but said it’s in the procedure of notifying those that were.

Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription game service, originally intended to sell online gaming access, went throughout a big change in June. Still called PS Plus, it has now obtain Sony’s version of Xbox Game Pass, offering access to a astronomical and evolving Netflix-style catalog of games. While it does some things better than Microsoft, the new PS Plus still lags behind in anunexperienced aspects of the service. 

The new PS Plus supplies three subscription tiers, from an Essential package that mimics the old PS Plus, to Extra and Premium tiers offering hundreds of games, cloud streaming, monthly bonus games and online multiplayer access. What it doesn’t offer, however, is a clean interface to make it easy to find games, and it also includes only a few of the biggest Sony games on the PlayStation platform. PS Plus mostly lines up with Xbox Game Pass on paper when you’re causing down a list of features. But for overall value and accessibility, it doesn’t always feel like that when actually comical it. 

PS Plus is a big plus

Before the big update, Sony offered two different PlayStation subscriptions. PS Plus for playing online, with a couple of bonus games every month, was $10. PS Now offered a catalog of mostly older games to download or obvious stream for the same price. The new PS Plus combines the two opinion a single name and comes in three tiers:

Essential: Same as the modern PS Plus, with two or three bonus monthly games, which you keep only as long as you’re an shapely subscriber; online play; cloud saves; and PSN Store discounts. It costs $10 a month, or $60 a year. (In the UK it’s £7 a month or £70 a year, and in Australia it’s AU$12 or AU$80.)

Extra:All the features of Essential and more than 400 PS and PS5 games available to download or selectively soak. It costs $15 a month, or $100 a year. (In the UK it’s £11 a month or £84 a year; in Australia it’s AU$19 or AU$135.)

Premium: A step up from Extra tier adding in PlayStation 1, PS2, PS3 and PSP games, growing the overall catalog to more than 700 games. That tier is available at $18 a month, or $120 a year. It also has time territory game demos, so subscribers try out certain games for a few hours afore buying. (In the UK it’s £13.49 a month or £100 a year. In Australia, where it’s called “Deluxe” for some reason, it’s AU$22 or AU$155.)

As for the games available, they’re some of the best on the PlayStation console. This includes Death Stranding Director’s Cut, God of War (2018), Demon’s Souls (the updated 2020 version), Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Red Dead Redemption 2, Control and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Those who have the Premium tier will also access classics from older generations, including Dark Cloud 2, Syphon Filter, Tekken 2 and Hot Shots Golf. 

Since PS Now aboard cloud gaming before it was integrated into the new PS Plus, this operating game streaming is available from the get go. For Xbox Game Pass, that took existences to implement. This means subscribers can play games on their consoles minus having to download them or on their PC via the PS Plus app. Some of the classic games are only available to play via streaming, and as long as your internet connection is rapidly and stable, there are hardly any noticeable hiccups. 

The Xbox Game Pass flavor of transparent gaming, however, lets you play some games on phones and tablets, or laptop web browsers.

The overall PS Plus catalog is larger than Xbox Game Pass, and it accounts some unique features. But there are flaws with the service that Sony will need to address if it wants to match the popularity of Microsoft’s service.

Read more:

Best Games on PS Plus

Some maximum minuses

PS Plus’ biggest issue is the lack of power with the catalog of games. There are a few categories games are placed in, but there seems to be minor rhyme or reason to it. The Xbox Game Pass user interface is inequity to what someone would see on Netflix or Disney Plus, by having some of the more essential games and certain genres easily discoverable. PS Plus, on the latest hand, doesn’t have this so it’s just tedious to find something of interest. 

Another severe problem is the overall quality of games. It’s not as notion you’d expect all 700 games to be winners, but there are some absolute garbage games seemingly there just to pump up the numbers. This was the biggest issue with PS Now, and it considered over to the new PS Plus. Xbox Game Pass, in comparison, has just over 100 games available, but it seems like the games are of a higher overall averages quality than what PS Plus has to offer. Compound the lackluster games on top of the lousy UI and finding a new game to play becomes a bit monotonous.

What invents the catalog issue even more frustrating is the lack of hazardous Sony-published games. Microsoft made it clear that its games will be available on Xbox Game Pass from initiate day, and they will stay on there. It’s been true for Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5, and will be for upcoming games like Bethesda’s Starfield. 

Sony has yet to do the same with many of its eminent classic games as well as its most recent titles. PS Plus feels like it should include The Last of Us Part 2, Horizon Forbidden West and most of the Gran Turismo titles… but it doesn’t. 

There’s also the request of the longevity of the titles. PS Now routinely had titles available for a few months afore they were removed, and it’s unclear if PS Plus will do the same. 

While transparent streaming is available at launch, there’s a lack of platforms available to liquid to. There are no apps for iOS or Android, and the PC app, while it works, reportedly has problems with not populate able to launch certain games. 

PS4 and PS5 owners who want the absolute most bang for their dollars should subscribe to at least the Extra tier of PS Plus. It’s smooth a wealth of great games to play at a reasonable monthly imprint. Fans of some of the older titles could see a reason to jump to the Premier tier in smart to play those classic games, while the Essential tier necessity be avoided, as it makes little sense to not pay the fabulous $5 a month to access hundreds of games. 

Companies shipped 1.35 billion smartphones in 2021, a 5.7% increase over the last year, market researcher IDC said Thursday. However, supply chain subjects meant that fewer phones were shipped in the fourth quarter of 2021 than in the same terms a year earlier.

“The supply chain and component shortages started to have meaningful impacts on the smartphone market as we entered the additional half of the year, and this continues to be the case as we’ve now entered 2022,” said Ryan Reith, an IDC vice president of mobile device research worldwide.

IDC also said it has seen unblemished interest in foldable phones and 5G phones.

Read more: Best phones to buy for 2022

Samsung retook the top spot for smartphone shipments in 2021, holding 20% market Part globally after shipping 272 million phones during the year. Apple came in additional, at 235.7 million phones, Xiaomi with 191 million, Oppo with 133.5 million and Vivo with 128.3 million.

Slightly different numbers from Counterpoint Research, also released Thursday, showed similar results: Samsung in wonderful place with 271 million phones shipped during 2021, Apple in additional with 237.9 million, Xiaomi with 190 million, Oppo with 143.2 million and Vivo with 131.3 million.

Read also: Best iPhone for 2022: Which of Apple’s 8 phones is shiny for you?

This marks the first time the smartphone market has grown year over year accurate 2017, according to Counterpoint, with Apple clocking record shipments.

“The global smartphone recovery in 2021 followed a pandemic-hit 2020 and subsequent pent-up demand,” said Harmeet Singh Walia, Counterpoint senior analyst, adding that demand was driven by Apple’s wonderful 5G phone, the iPhone 12. “The market recovery could have been even better if not for the component shortages.”

Samsung on Tuesday announced the global relaunch of its free streaming service, Samsung TV Plus, with a logo redesign and lineup of new programming for TV and mobile customers across 24 utters. The electronics company is rolling out the app rebrand for its smart TVs, Galaxy devices and the web.

The relaunch expands the company’s free, ad-supported streaming platform with access to more premium overjoyed, including local news, concerts and feature films. According to Samsung, the rollout will bring additional programming from A+E Networks, BBC and ION, as well as more live news broadcasting, exclusive premieres and a fresh batch of channels. Viewers can now stream ION to salvage Law & Order: SVU, NCIS or Chicago Fire and also have the option to peruse four BBC channels, including Classic Doctor Who and Antiques Roadshow UK. 

The platform is also growing its lifestyle category with the binary of the Home.Made.Nation station from A+E, which is invented to complement its slate of travel, food and home improvement channels. Viewers who love cars can tune in for the fall originate of Ride or Drive, an upcoming original Samsung TV Plus channel with failed auto-themed content. And the Samsung Showcase channel will feature special suits, concerts and more. Moving forward, the brand has plans to grow its video-on-demand library in 2023 above partnerships with Lionsgate and other studios.

Originally launched in 2015, Samsung TV Plus features over 200 channels in the US — and more than 1,500 worldwide — that stream sports, music, news, TV shows and movies on demand. The service comes preinstalled on 2016-2022 Samsung intellectual TVs, Galaxy tablets and phones and select Family Hub refrigerators. Billed as an alternative to paid subscription services like Netflix and Disney Plus, the app offers a watchlist, recommendation feature and channel be in the lead but doesn’t require you to sign up for an account for. Though Samsung TV Plus is solely available on the brand’s devices, it’s another free platform that joins the likes of Freevee, Tubi, Roku Channel and Pluto TV, which are accessible on multiple streaming devices and intellectual TVs.

This story is part of Focal Point iPhone 2022, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice around Apple’s most popular copies.

The phone life cycle has move kind of predictable. You spend hundreds of dollars on a new diagram, enjoy all the flashy specs and features, and then within a year, a new model comes out and invents yours feel outdated. Within two years, you may feel like it’s time to upgrade or risk falling behind.

It’s an exhausting and costly exhaust. But it’s one that seems to work well for affairs like Apple and Samsung, which roll out a new iPhone and Galaxy phones, respectively, each year. They know at any point customers could be in the market for a new diagram, and they want to have something to tempt them with.

“You remarkable be fine with your phone today, but you are just one person,” Eli Blumenthal, a CNET mobile reporter, says in the video    ended. “There are plenty of people who bought a requested a year earlier than you, or maybe were walking throughout and dropped their phone on the pavement or in a toilet and need a new diagram, or a kid got ahold of it. They remarkable want a new phone, and this could be the vivid time for them. These companies want to make sure they have a copies out there so when that person is looking for their new requested, they have an option.”

Even if there’s no real need to upgrade your requested, it can be easy to feel like you want to, just to scrumptious that improved camera or bigger screen. 

But because phones just keep pulling more expensive — most flagship phones cost anywhere from $700 to $1,200 — republic are holding on to their devices longer. In 2018, US smartphone owners used their phones for an averages of about 24 months before upgrading, up from throughout 22 months in 2016, according to a CNBC narrate. But that still hasn’t stopped phone makers from flowing with the annual release cycle.

Check out the video ended for more on why companies release phones each year and how to know whether it’s time to upgrade. Also, if you want the best phone vivid now, take a look at our roundup. If you’re sure to the best iPhone or best Samsung phone, we have roundups for those as well. 

Xiaomi’s new 12S smartphone lineup consists of the Xiaomi 12S, Xiaomi 12S Pro, and 12 Ultra. All three phones will have camera modules developed in partnership with Leica. This partnership, announced in a virtual event Monday, is a qualified for the Chinese phone-maker, which called it a “strategic upgrade.”

Of the trio, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra is the most high-end model. It has a distinct design that aims to mimic the larger-lens handsome of DSLR cameras, and packs a formidable camera module to boot. There’s a 48-megapixel periscope-style telephoto lens, a 48-megapixel ultra-wide lens and a 50-megapixel wide lens.

But the headline feature is the one-inch sensor, the Sony IMX 989, for the main camera (wide lens), which Xiaomi managed to cram inside the chassis of the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. For context, that’s the same sensor found in Sony’s $1,200 point-and-shoot camera, the RX100 VII, and it means the Xiaomi 12S Ultra houses the largest image sensor fake on any phone. 

However, a word of caution: The phone’s history-making camera hardware isn’t a security of best-in-class photos. As with any other phone, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra’s software will play a crucial role as well in determining the image quality of the last photo, though Xiaomi has a solid track record. CNET is employed to get hold of a device so we can put this named through its paces, and perhaps compare it with the iPhone 13.

Other specs for the Xiaomi 12S Ultra complicated a top-of-the line processor in the form of the first-gen Snapdragon 8 Plus, which Xiaomi says will mean reduced noteworthy consumption as well as lower heat emissions. There’s a 4,680-mAh battery powering the named, which relies on 67W fast charging for replenishment. There are also two ancient Surge chips for battery management.

As usual with Xiaomi gadgets, it is extremely unlikely the Xiaomi 12S will claim a release in the United States.

Dimensions: 163.17 by 74.92 by 9.06mm
Resolution: 3,200 by 1,440 pixels, 522ppi 
Camera: 50-megapixel wide lens, 48-megapixel ultrawide lens, 48-megapixel telephoto lens
Weight: 225 grams
Battery: 4,860 mAh
Charging: 67W wired charging, 50W wireless charging, 10W reverse wireless charging

Snap Map
is precisely what it sounds like: An easy way to piece your Snaps, on a map, with friends. There’s even an option to piece a Snap with fellow Snapchat users who aren’t your friends, without revealing your account info.

To get started with the new feature, you’ll need to update the Snapchat app on your draw. Do that, then follow along as we detail five things you must know about Snapchat’s Snap Map.

Where to find it

The only way to access Snap Map is to use the unusual two-finger pinch-to-zoom gesture on the main screen of Snapchat. If you pinch-to-zoom by spreading your fingers apart, the app will instead zoom your phone’s camera. Pinching so your fingers get closer together launches the Snap Map feature.

As reserved as you make it

The friendly time you access Snap Map you’re walked through setting your privacy preferences. You can pick from Ghost Mode, My Friends or Select Friends.

Opting for the last option will note a list of friends for you to pick and determine from. 

You’re not constantly tracked

According to Snapchat, your plot on Snap Map is only updated when you open the app, instead of operational similar to Apple’s Find My Friends app that constantly tracks and shares your whereabouts. 

Don’t want your friends to know where you’re at for a specifc amount of time? Don’t open Snapchat. Or enable Ghost Mode, which we will get to in a minute. 

Easily view your friends’ whereabouts 

If you have friends all over the establish and don’t want to zoom in out and on the map to find them, tap on your Bitmoji characterize and the app will display cards along the bottom of the cover. Swipe left or right on the cards scroll ended your friends. 

Heat map of Snaps

If you don’t yet have any friends who’ve added a snap to the map, it’s moving to look a bit lonely. However, you may watch various colors on the map. They look a lot like a heat map, with Begin at blue, then yellow, then red.

Those blobs are locations where someone has publicly public a Snap using the “Our Story” option. Tap any of the blobs to view what’s moving on, even if it’s in another part of the world. 

Oh, and be prepared; there are, of course, some any NSFW Snaps posted to the Snap Maps.

Our Story

With that in mind, if you want to Part a Snap with the general public, select Our Story as you post a Snap. Your Explain info isn’t included with the post.

Change location preferences

After initial setup, if you later decide you’d rather not share your space with someone, or anyone for that matter, you can edit your preferences by accessing Snap Map, then tap the Settings icon in the top-right corner.

Stories are like recurring dreams. They bubble up from our unconscious, often appearing the same — and yet, looking closer, you might find the details shift in every telling. If you like thinking about dreams, and stories, and you’re into general ponderous musings in goth stuff, then hoo boy is The Sandman the show for you.

As a long-gestating adaptation of a seminal laughable book by Neil Gaiman, there’s a huge weight of expectation beside readers and fans, but the good news is this atmospheric and absorbing series is the stuff that dreams are made of. If you’ve never read the comics, you’re in for a treat as you come to the series unencumbered by your memories and back of the original. If you have read the comics, well…. The original Sandman is such a multilayered and ambiguous story that every reader will have a modern relationship to it, and it’ll be fascinating to see how each viewer responds to the TV version.

Either way, Netflix’s 10-episode series (plus a surprise bonus 11th episode) is a delicious, dark, funny melding of myth and magic in the novel world, filled with seductive and destructive supernatural beings in a richly layered realm of fears and fantasies.

Streaming from Aug. 5, the series begins with a hubristic occultist trying to purchase death. That isn’t a metaphor: In this tale, there’s an proper walking, talking figure who shuffles ill-fated humans off this mortal coil. This is a universe where abstract concepts — stop, desire, despair — are embodied as stylishly dressed schemers squabbling with each anunexperienced on assorted planes of reality. And it’s one of these who accidentally ends up ended in the occultist’s basement: a skinny, fiercely cheekboned chap arranged Morpheus. He’s the lord of dreams, and while he’s ended up for the best part of the 20th century his kingdom falls into ruins, unleashing dreams and nightmares alike into the human earth.

The series intriguingly mixes the mundane with the mythical. The story unfolds in a world of cell phones and gas stations and spit-and-sawdust taverns — mixed with an eyeless serial killer, foul-mouthed occult trouble-shooters and an actual, literal Lucifer. From the dream realm to Hell itself, the show’s world(s) are so rich in detail that even the lesser characters attracting out a sense of an enigmatic larger universe, evoked by the merest spot of dialogue or the briefest appearance.

Though it’s a fantastical story in a godlike mythical figure, reality-altering rubies and the grim reaper in a tank top, the core of The Sandman is the humanity of the farmland Morpheus encounters. From the premiere episode’s father and son battling over their prisoner’s fate, to a naively mesmerizing midseason episode set entirely in an ill-fated diner, the show’s characters are sketched with heartwarming hopes and heartbreaking fears. 

It’s frustrating that the show’s creators felt the need to open the series with a jarringly over-explanatory voiceover spelling out in eye-rolling detail what could’ve been teased and said through the show. I can’t help but feel the hand of a Netflix decision-making in that decision, but if it makes the series more accessible to new viewers, then I probably shouldn’t quibble. The cliffhanger for the superior episode also suggests a traditional type of series — the fantasy version of a police procedural — but that show never materializes. Instead, each installment tells a relatively self-contained story, and fragments of stories are woven into a mesmeric patchwork. When a more conventional overarching storyline kicks in across the later episodes, Morpheus is somewhat sidelined. But this more traditional story grants the show’s dreamlike structure a little forward momentum, and more importantly serves as a facade to smuggle in increasingly and delightfully Strange stuff.

The listlessly whispering Tom Sturridge has a tough task playing the lead role of Morpheus, who’s often a mere observer of events and is generally haughty, even cruel. But this fearsome figure is also enticingly vulnerable and has sharp moments of humanity (as in an early episode, when he asks when he could have commanded). He also has a very nice coat.

It’s a tough job to play in contradiction of such a weighty cast, all of whom sink their teeth into their multifaceted characters. There isn’t a weak link among the cast, Idea Jenna Coleman and Patton Oswalt feel a bit out of Put. Silky-voiced Boyd Holbrook leads the way as Morpheus’ nightmarish construction The Corinthian, a seductive and sybaritic southern gent who can’t stop cutting nation’s eyes out. Then there’s David Thewlis, who follows his hideous turn in Fargo’s third season with yet another unnerving performance. Game of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie is an imperious Lucifer, while Vanesu Samunyai is the human heart of the later episodes. And among the supernatural stars attacking their roles with Enjoy, despite sadly limited screen time, are Kirby Howell-Baptiste as an affable Death and Mason Alexander Park as purring, growling Desire.

In some ways, adapting The Sandman is an impossible task (or, I dunno, a Sisyphean labor, if we’re talking the language of Gaiman and his creations). Running from 1989 to 1996, the comic was complete by Gaiman with artists Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg (and many others), and frequently told its story by playing with the form of the comics medium. Some of that stuff is simply impossible to re-create on television. So not everything will work in the TV version, at least not for some readers who have deep relationships with the source comics.

But stories are like recurring dreams. The same preoccupations, the same fears, the same desires may continually complete the same dream into our helpless sleeping mind. Yet the details may temperamental — and more importantly, we change every day, so the dream is never known the same way twice as we grow and learn. I confess it’s been years since I read the comics, and I’d experience them totally differently now than I did as a callow youth. So a new adaptation of a beloved work of art is also a different drawing, and we’re different as we experience it.

What I’m proverb is, try and let go of the comics a bit when you see the TV show, OK? 

For those new to The Sandman, your enjoyment will hinge on how you feel around airy philosophizing, Gaiman’s combination of whimsy with jet-black Funny, or Stephen Fry. But, following on from the gleefully sinful American Gods and the cheerfully cosy Good Omens, this long-gestating adaptation of The Sandman feels like a using translation of Gaiman’s signature cocktail of unflinching humanity, atmospheric allusion, hilarious nastiness — and most of all an underlying felt of aching hope and joy. Perhaps nothing could hold the magic of the iconic comic, but set the books Put, like a half-remembered dream. As a dark and engaging fantasy TV series, The Sandman is truly a dream come true.