tenderhearted

Both are essentially tenderhearted, which is perhaps not the most practical quality for their professions, but necessary for the story — we need to like them.

“The show wouldn’t work if Jeff wasn’t playing Joel because he really is so funny and sly and so tenderhearted and heartbreaking and just everything you want to be,” she says in a Zoom interview.

This is a quirky, small-scale, quietly reflective work that’s as tenderhearted as it is spryly comic and as poignant as it is ultimately uplifting.

The eight-episode series, the latest in Netflix’s Sandman Universe, features tenderhearted queerness and queer characters in various stages of coming out and coming of age.

The last three songs of the show — “No More,” “No One Is Alone” and the “Children Will Listen” finale — bring the musical’s tenderhearted melancholy to a full boil.