The Sandman Debuts as Netflix's #1 TV Show for August

The newest DC Comics-inspired television series, The Sandman, has become a bonafide hit. On Tuesday, Netflix unveiled its latest streaming metrics, which cover the most-watched movies and television shows on the platform from the week of August 1st through August 7th. The Sandman came in as the most-streamed series for that stretch of time, meaning that since its Friday, August 5th premiere, the series was streamed for a total of 69.48 million hours worldwide.

The Sandman is based on the iconic comic from writer Neil Gaiman and artists Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, Bryan Talbot, and Michael Zulli. A rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama and legend are seamlessly interwoven, The Sandman follows the people and places affected by Morpheus, the Dream King, as he mends the cosmic – and human – mistakes he's made during his vast existence.

The series stars Tom Sturridge as Dream, Kirby Howell-Baptise as Death, Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer, Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess, Asim Chaudhry as Abel, Sanjeev Bhaskar as Cain, Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine, Joely Richardson as Ethel Cripps, David Thewlis as John Dee, Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian, Stephen Fry as Gilbert, Patton Oswalt as the voice of Dream's raven Matthew, and Mason Alexander Park as Desire, Dream's sibling. 

"Doing the Netflix TV series, we're very much looking at that as going, 'Okay, it is 2020, let's say that I was doing Sandman starting in 2020, what would we do? How would we change things? What gender would this character be? Who would this person be? What would be happening?'" series creator Neil Gaiman said told ComicBook.com and other outlets in a 2020 interview. "The fact that we have seventy-five issues of Sandman plus -- essentially, 13 full books -- worth of material, is a really good thing. It's not a drawback. It's on our side. And the fact that we're in a world in which we can take things that only existed in comic book art, and that can now exist in reality."

What do you think of The Sandman being the most-streamed Netflix series so far in August? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

The first season of The Sandman is now available to stream exclusively on Netflix.