Good Omens

The novel Good Omens is funny - which I mean in two senses. It's a funny book, written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, both renowned fantasy writers, the latter of whom in particular is famed for his comedic take on the genre. And the novel is filled with humor - my elevator pitch for it would be "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Apocalypse" given its creatively silly tangents and humanistic absurdism. But it's also funny in the sense that it's clearly parodying the 1976 movie The Omen, a much more serious take on the premise of the antichrist being swapped into the family of an American diplomat. I don't know how lasting the influence of the Omen has been (I tried watching it once and found it dull) but it's notable that it has been nearly thirty years between the publication of this novel and the release of the new miniseries, while it had been only fourteen between the movie and the book.

Ultimately, while the arrival of the antichrist is a central aspect to the story, the core of it is the odd-couple relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley, an angel and a demon who have spent so much time on Earth that they've grown quite fond of the world and its humans and aren't all that stoked for this big, climactic apocalypse everything has supposedly been building toward.

Having spent so much time as opposite numbers - literally dating back to the Garden of Eden, where Crowley was the snake that tempted Eve and Aziraphale was the angel holding the flaming sword (until he felt sorry for the newly-banished Adam and Eve and gave them the sword as a parting gift) guarding the entrance - the two have spent more time together than in Heaven or Hell and have been enemies so long that they've become best friends. As they realized that each person balanced out the other's work, it became an excuse to kind of knock off work early and just enjoy the world.

The television miniseries scores an incredible casting coup. Michael Sheen plays Aziraphale and David Tennant plays Crowley. I may never have seen such precisely perfect casting before. Sheen nails Aziraphale's effete helplessness - a dorky guy who really just wants to read books and enjoy culture - and Tennant oozes rockstar cool even as he's dodging the demands of his more zealous demonic brethren. And the two have magnificent chemistry - one could interpret them as a bickering married couple who nevertheless have a clearly deep bond that they don't want to see broken by the outbreak of supernatural war.

There's an absurdist, almost dadaist quality to their efforts to prevent the apocalypse, particularly given that for several years, their plan to moderate the antichrist's upbringing to make sure he's not too evil but also not so good that people will notice that destiny is being disturbed, turns out to be a fool's errand because there was a mix-up when the children were swapped out, meaning that this kid is actually just the biological child of a random English couple while the real antichrist went to that family in the English countryside.

Of course, in this parodic version of the Omen story, the antichrist is not inherently evil - but he does have power to shape reality. The thing is, he's had a pretty normal upbringing for an 11-year-old English boy, so aside from having a clear leadership position amongst his three best friends, his desires are pretty standard for a boy his age.

The show holds pretty faithful to the book (I can't recall if the epilogue dealing with how Aziraphale and Crowley face punishment for their actions is from the book) with a couple of small changes. I would say that the entire series is quite enjoyable, but the brilliant casting of its two central leads leaves the rest of the show looking poorer in comparison. (I will say Jon Hamm is nearly as perfect casting for the Archangel Gabriel - who serves as Aziraphale's sort of corporate, falsely-friendly boss.)

While I'm a Gaiman fan (I keep meaning to read more Discworld books and form a stronger opinion on Pratchett) I think that the story and its style works a lot better in the fun tangents than in its master plot - something that was true of the book as well as the series. There's a bit of a feeling of anticlimax, even as things get very big toward the end, but if the story is an excuse to hang out with these fun characters, it feels very much worth it. Notably, in episode three, there's an extended sequence showing Aziraphale and Crowley's friendship developing over the ages, from Eden to Noah's Ark, Jesus' crucifixion, the Middle Ages, the French Revolution, and World War Two, which is an invention for the show and wonderful piece.

At six episodes, it's not a massive time investment anyway, and worth it for Sheen and Tennant alone.