Sweet Tooth is a strange case of mis-adaptation. On its surface, none of its alterations to Jeff Lemire’s comic are necessarily problems; after all, switching up plot elements for a new medium can be exciting. However, the decision to transform a lurid, spiritual, post-apocalyptic parable into a Steven Spielberg-esque childhood adventure comes with a number of tonal and narrative side-effects, which the series can’t seem to overcome.
It also feels unreasonably cheap for an eight-episode Netflix show produced by various arms of Warner Bros. (namely, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, and Team Downey from Robert Downey Jr. and wife Susan Downey), but the issue with its second-rate quality isn’t just one of poor compositing and flimsy aesthetics, but of how those aesthetics end up clashing with the story being told.
SWEET TOOTH is a Netflix series based on a comic book from DC Comics that was first released in 2009. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world – the result of “The Great Crumble” which was a deadly virus. And yes, with the current pandemic, this part of the premise feels all-too-familiar.
Overall, this feels very much like an adventure along the lines of Lords of the Rings (it’s even shot in New Zealand) or even E.T. Complete with a narrator to keep the audience completely in the loop as to what we’re seeing. I love it! However, I want to warn you, this series is also very brutal and violent.
The show’s premise, like that of the 2009 Vertigo comic, is undoubtedly intriguing. About a decade ago, the deadly H5G9 virus began culling the human populace, and every child born thereafter was an animal-human hybrid, though no one seems to know which came first. One such hybrid child, a ten-year-old deer-boy named Gus (Christian Convery) lives deep in the woods with his father Richard (Will Forte), who he lovingly calls “Pubba”. The sweet but secretive Richard has little games and rules to keep Gus safe and out of sight, since human beings have a tendency to hunt hybrid children, and Gus’s animalistic ears and pronounced antlers are visible from afar.
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In fact, ten-year-old Gus has never met another person outside of Richard — that is, until a pair of poachers comes knocking, and Gus is subsequently saved by a large, imposing man named Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie), his unlikely protector and companion for much of the show.
Convery plays Gus with a fittingly doe-eyed innocence, and his practical ears (which were puppeteered from off-screen) add a unique layer to his emotional expression. While the Gus of Lemire’s comic was gaunt and timid, the show’s Gus matches its adventurous, playful tone — but therein lies its first major problem. The world around Gus is anything but playful, and the show refuses to remove its kiddie gloves even during harsher moments.
Every character can be neatly sorted into binary “good” or “evil” boxes, and whenever the show approaches anything resembling the comic’s complexity, it finds the most convenient reason to avoid getting its hands dirty, with solutions often magically presenting themselves before anyone has to make a difficult choice.
Stars: Christian Convery (Gus), Nonso Anozie (Tommy Jepperd), Adeel Akhtar (Dr. Aditya Singh), Aliza Vellani (Rani Singh), Stefania LaVie Owen (Bear), Dania Ramirez (Aimee Eden), Neil Sandilands (General Abbot), with Will Forte (Father) and James Brolin (Narrator).