Good Omens
Series Directed by Douglas Mackinnon
Series Writing Credits Neil Gaiman (screenplay), Terry Pratchett (creator)
Series Produced by Rod Brown, Neil Gaiman, Caroline Skinner, Chris Sussman, & Rob Wilkins
Series Music by David Arnold
Main Cast David Tennant as Crowley, Michael Sheen as Aziraphale, Frances McDormand as God, Sam Taylor Buck as Adam Young, Sian Brooke as Deirdre Young, Daniel Mays as Arthur Young, Ollie as Dog, Jon Hamm as Gabriel, Jack Whitehall as Newton Pulsifer, Ned Dennehy as Hastur, Duke of Hell.
Back in the days before Twitter, there were these things called ‘books’, and one of them was Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett. Both were masters of wonder and wit, but that wasn’t enough: they let themselves be influenced by their good friend, the late Douglas Adams, and the source of all humor and intellect in the western world, the late Monty Python. Despite everyone being so late, the result was an astonishingly funny and entertaining book that has annoyed millions of fundamentalists and caused people to regard their dogs with deep suspicion ever since.
The plot, faithfully reproduced in the BBC series, is as follows: Michael Sheen is an angel from heaven, and David Tennant is a devil from hell. They’ve been around since 4004 BCE, when they played roles in the garden of Eden. Crowley (then named Crawly) was a talking snake, and Aziraphale was the angel who took pity on Adam and Eve and gave the couple a flaming sword of knowledge. They’ve been on Earth ever since, idiosyncratically saving and tempting people.
Both have, to a degree, ‘gone native’, and a certain amount of fraternization has taken place. Realizing that they often cancel each other out on various projects they are both involved in, they don’t bother doing anything at all, and settle for writing memos to their respective bosses claiming glorious victory. So when word comes from On High that the Antichrist is to be delivered as a baby and will, eleven years later, cause Armageddon, they are both dismayed. Aziraphale has developed a taste for French pastries, and Crowley just likes fucking with people, and tormenting plants. They don’t want the world to end.
Crowley reluctantly delivers the Antichrist to the order of demonic nuns who are supposed to hook the baby up with an appropriately evil family, the US ambassador and his wife. However, there’s a bit of a cock-up. Nuns get confused, babies get switched, and the Antichrist ends up with a nice, middle-class couple in Oxfordshire, who, on the grand scale of evil, rarely rise above the level of a typical house cat.
I’m sure you can figure it all out from there and don’t need me to tell you what happens after that. A few minutes’ thought and you already have deduced the plot elements of the Witchfinder Army, “The Nice and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes Nutter,” Them, the Hound of Hades, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Satan. It’s all so very, very obvious. Sigh.
The opening credits ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=92&v=BsrPO8qslBE ) alone make it worth watching. It contains in just one minute all the daffy grandeur of a Monty Python animated sketch, or an ecumenical vision of Yellow Submarine. Easter Eggs for readers of the novel abound. The opening theme, by David Arnold, is purest earworm.
Tennant and Sheen are perfect in their roles, and have a strong supporting cast. Jon Hamm is deliriously funny in his role. “Don’t ‘greater good’ me. I’m the goddam Archangel Gabriel!”. If that sounds like a line Nick Offerman might use, well, he’s in this, too, as the American Ambassador.
I’m watching this alongside the second season of another Gaiman effort, American Gods, and the juxtaposition is in interesting one. Gaiman, of course, is fascinated by the interactions between Gods and humanity, and the two series could be described as Gaiman Light and Gaiman Dark. Gaiman Dark is the stuff of nightmares. Gaiman Light is the stuff of Dreams. Dreams where you wake up laughing.
Gaiman wishes you all sweet dreams.