Showrunner: Neil Gaiman
Season length: 6 episodes
The year is 2019. The news is littered with signs of the end times, with continuous debates over our politicians’ inability to confront climate change, continuous reports of atrocities across the globe, and Bohemian Rhapsody winning the Oscar for best editing. Amidst all of the doom and gloom, amongst the Twitter arguments, the concerning news bulletins, and the weather events, I had been quietly excited for a television miniseries about to hit Amazon Prime. If anything was going to make me feel better about the end times, it would be Good Omens—an adaptation of a book that has acted as a warm mug of hot chocolate to my increasingly cynical soul for years.
Centred around an incoming apocalypse, Good Omens follows demon Crowley (David Tennant) and angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen). After forming an unlikely friendship throughout their days on earth, they find themselves quite liking their existence among humans—enough to want to stop the end of times. Even as a lover of the original novel, I wondered whether the absolutely bonkers premise could lend itself to a visual format. The book’s witty humour and wordy passages are quite well-suited to… well, a book. However, after watching even the first two episodes of the adaptation, it is safe to say that Good Omens is one of the best screen adaptations of one of my most beloved reads.
A lot of the show’s success rests on the shoulders of its likeable leads. Sheen and Tennant’s chemistry is charming, magnetic, and a pleasure to watch. Sure, the supporting cast—with the likes of Jack Whitehall, Jon Hamm, Frances McDormand and Benedict Cumberbatch in the mix—is a phenomenal addition to the series, and I was constantly in awe of how well-cast the entire thing was. Every character is zany, likeable, and a little bit mad. With everything narrated by the voice of God (and we all know that, like God, McDormand can do no wrong), we are afforded moments of wit straight from the source. Ultimately, you can tell every member of the cast cared about what they were making and had a bloody good time while doing so.
Visually, the richness of aesthetic matches the density of the original text. Everything is laced with deep, saturated colouration, making the entire six episodes a feast for the eyes. Every aspect of visual storytelling is used to the series’ advantage; the demons are made all the more interesting by clever use of practical make-up effects, while the bureaucratic angels are constantly shot in close-ups to facilitate uncomfortable feelings of oppression. The CGI is not hyper-realistic by any sense of the imagination but fits the visual style that the show had aimed for. In essence, the series plays out like the vivid imaginations of a reader—a feat incredibly hard to achieve on screen.
Throughout my childhood, I had spent a lot of late nights with the novels of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman—straining my eyes trying to read as many words as possible in the moonlight after I was told to turn my light off and go to sleep. For a television series to capture those moments for me is something that, ironically, I cannot put into words. It was Pratchett’s last wish for this series to be made, and I cannot help but think of it as a gift from the great beyond, with Gaiman working exceptionally hard to bring their vision to life. After being confronted with a slew of disappointing adaptations in my time, I can decidedly say that Good Omens is not one of them. Would I recommend this show? Well, I could say I’m evangelical about it. Charming, witty, and devilishly fun, Good Omens is a series that, like the original novel, will delight and entertain. If our oncoming apocalypse is unavoidable, I will at least be glad to know that I was able to see one of my favourite novels come to life before my firey doom.
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