TV REVIEW: ‘Good Omens’ need not rush the apocalypse
David Tennant as the demon Crowley and Michael Sheen as the angel Aziraphale in Good Omens.
Within the slightly eccentric community of British sci-fi/fantasy lovers, Good Omens stands on its own little corner. It’s not a series like Harry Potter or Doctor Who, although it shares some of those franchises’ DNA. Co-writers Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Prachett have authored or contributed to all manner of book series, comics, and TV shows over the years, and the new TV adaptation of Good Omens even features a former Doctor, series lead David Tennant.
Efforts to make the book into some sort of screen adaptation have popped up in fits and starts for a long time. Gaiman confirmed that Terry Gilliam (a solid choice in my view) was on board to direct a movie a few years ago, and I remember fans making concept credit sequences as far back as 2010. But it took the financial might and flexible atmosphere of a streaming service to bring the book to life, with the new show appearing on Amazon Prime Video at the end of May.
Good Omens is one of several works that Gaiman has centered around religion and spirituality, the other notable one (also adapted for Prime, at least here in Canada) being American Gods. Of the two, however, Good Omens is the more light-hearted and satirical. Whereas American Gods often shows its mythological deities variously murdering or otherwise exploiting humans, Good Omens depicts Heaven and Hell as more of a pair of twin bureaucracies, pushing paperwork around and counting down the days to the end of the world with a cheerful, if grimly cynical attitude.
Aziraphale and Crowley have been friends for centuries.
The show makes it clear right out of the gate - courtesy of a voiceover from the voice of God herself, Frances McDormand - that Earth is not 4.5 billion years old. In fact, the real number is apparently more in line with Biblical estimates: roughly 6,000 years. And since the beginning in the Garden of Eden, two beings have watched over humanity: an angel called Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and a demon called Crowley (David Tennant). Aziraphale and Crowley are given separate missions: one to help humans, and the other to corrupt them.
But the longer the angel and demon spend on Earth over the centuries, the more they come to like it. Aziraphale is an old soul (figuratively this time), loving classical music, old books, and good food. Crowley is more of the rock n’ roll variety: he likes tight pants, dark glasses, and tearing around London in a supernaturally fast 1930s Bentley. But what the two have in common is that they’re not very interested in letting the Earth get consumed in the prophesied war between their two sides.
Aziraphale and Crowley figure that if they simply drag out their duties, everything will be alright. But when Lucifer sends his son, the Antichrist, to Earth, it’s obvious that time is running out. And in true tongue-in-cheek British style, there’s another wrinkle: Aziraphale and Crowley lose track of the Antichrist, meaning they won’t be able to convince the child not to end the world. What follows brings in a motley collection of other characters, including a young witch and “witchfinder”, a crew of unassuming kids, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The miniseries - currently just the one season is available, with no official word on further blocks of episodes - sticks to the framing of the book fairly well. At just six episodes, however, there’s a persistent feeling that the show is zooming along at too fast a clip. Jokes don’t really get a chance to fully develop, and character motivations fall by the wayside.
At one point, as the Apocalypse appears to be gaining steam, the young witch trying to stop it, Anathema Device (Adria Arjona) encounters a recruit from the Witchfinder Army named Newton Pulsifer (Jack Whitehall). Because of a family prophecy, Anathema knows she will eventually have sex with Newton. And so they do - but predicted or not, the way the show sets it up takes away any chance at chemistry or a relationship. It’s the kind of sequence of events that if it were given just one more episode to brew, would have felt much more satisfying, and a little less in service to a joke about witchy prognostication.
Adria Arjona as Anathema Device, a young witch.
We also get very little time with a number of other secondary characters, like Adam Young the Antichrist (Sam Taylor Buck) or his gang of childhood friends. There might have been some potential for Stranger Things-style interplay between the kids if given a bit more screen time. Instead, Adam is mostly a plot engine, arbitrarily unlocking his supernatural powers like a light switch and pushing the story forward without much personal investment.
We do spend just the right amount of time with the other forces of Heaven and Hell. I really liked the production design for both realms; Heaven is a gleaming, open-concept office and Hell is a leaking, crowded concrete bunker crossed with a Department of Motor Vehicles from the 80s. Squish the two together and you might get something not unlike the vision of the future in Gilliam’s Brazil. Populating these areas are various angels and demons we recognize: Jon Hamm is perfectly smarmy as the Archangel Gabriel, and Ned Dennehy is slimy and unhinged as Hastur. Still, NBC’s The Good Place holds the crown as the best TV representation of Heaven and Hell in recent memory.
The highlight, though, is that Sheen and Tennant are pitch-perfect in their roles. As Aziraphale, Sheen is fussy and buttoned-down, with the tiniest hint of a rebellious streak that makes his friendship with Crowley make sense. Meanwhile, Tennant draws on his experience with other reptilian villains on his resumé, like Barty Crouch, Jr. in Harry Potter or Kilgrave in Netflix’s Jessica Jones. There’s one thing I couldn’t quite make sense of with Crowley, and that’s his preference for Queen as the only music he listens to; wouldn’t a demon with a taste for rock be blasting all sorts of 70s hits, like from Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin? Apparently the producers were quite happy to get the Queen licensing rights and wanted to use them to the hilt.
Heaven (featuring Jon Hamm as Gabriel) is apparently open concept.
Music choices aside, the series holds your interest. Good Omens is a difficult book to adapt, what with its frequent tangents and print-specific devices like footnotes. But the central friendship between Aziraphale and Crowley is what the writers devote most of their time to, and it shows. If the story is ultimately about humanity finding its own way, with only cursory nudges from supernatural powers, then the show captures that easily.
Perhaps what I really wanted from the series was the sense of unpredictability and subversion that Gaiman and Prachett managed to imbue into a plot driven by “nice and accurate prophecies”. This sort of paradoxical, surreal humour is exactly what attracts me to similar works like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and these six episodes don’t quite generate the sort of belly laughs that I remember from that series or from my first read-through of Good Omens. Considering, though, that the finale leaves some room for further episodes (which would immediately take it past the material in the book), maybe what the show really needs is to spread its feathered wings and do its own thing for a while.
Stray thoughts
I’m not sure how the pitch meeting with Amazon went, but maybe the producers could have asked for more budget for VFX? Shots of aliens, Atlantis, and Lucifer all look a little underdone.
The final showdown at Tadfield Airbase was awkwardly blocked; the tension seemed missing considering the characters were standing so close to each other.
I need to get a Scottish person’s second opinion on Michael McKean’s accent.