Good Omens is a delightfully imperfect adaptation of a beloved book

Amazon Prime Video

My history with the book Good Omens is a bit muddled in my memory. I was familiar with Neil Gaiman mainly through his work on Sandman, but after my brother recommended Anansi Boys, which I loved, I ended up making my way through much of Gaiman’s work. This included Good Omens, which he cowrote with the late Terry Pratchett, well known for the Discworld series, which I never really got into much.

Rereading the book after having read each of the authors’ works by themselves helps to differentiate the style and focuses of each one. Pratchett had a sense of humor that was dark but zany, with a love of parentheticals and asides and a deep sense of weird lore. Gaiman’s humor style was more arch and conversational, situational and dark in a different way. That shared love of mythos, dark subjects, and fantastical concepts made Good Omens a fairly successful book to read. Even if it’s among my least favorite Gaiman books, it ranks near the top of my most favorite Pratchett ones.

Good Omens recently finished its six episode miniseries run on Amazon, and that is really nearly the perfect length for this sort of thing. I think seven or eight would actually have been the best season length, because there are a few storylines and characters not as well served, as I’ll get to. Typically a book of the length of Good Omens never works perfectly as a standalone movie because there is simply too much content. The first season of Game of Thrones understood this.

In Good Omens, we follow two main characters, an angel and a demon. Michael Sheen plays Aziraphale, the angel that guarded the Garden of Eden and a soldier on the side of Heaven. Throughout the years he has developed a bit of a taste for some of the finer things in life (meaning Earth), in particular rare and old books. Sheen plays the angel as a good-hearted sort, someone who wants to play by the rules but ultimately wants what’s best for humanity. His subtlety here is excellent.

David Tennant vamps it up in a very fun way as Crowley, a demon on the side of Hell. The two are frenemies and really friends, although neither wants to admit it. But it all becomes moot when the two discover that the Apocalypse is coming. After some chicanery and Satanic nuns at the start, the Antichrist as a baby is delivered to Earth, and when he reaches the right age, the world will end.

And then it will be time for Heaven and Hell to go to war. Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley is such a fan of this endgame, and thus decide to team up to try and stop the end of the world — after all, they do quite enjoy living there.

At the same time, we also follow the storylines of Adam, said Antichrist, as he falls into his mandated role and struggles against it. This storyline in the books was never my favorite, and it’s shrunken down even more here. At least it does end in a very affecting and interesting divergence from the original book’s way of wrapping up his storyline.

Also present are the young witch Anathema Device (played by the relative newcomer Adria Arjona), who is following a book of prophecies from her ancestor Agnes Nutter to try and save the world. Her fate intersects with hapless young man and descendant of old witch hunters Newton Pulsifer (Jack Whitefall), a mostly boring character. Their dull storyline is spiced up a bit with the cutesy prophecy jokes and a great performance from Michael McKean as the only living Witchfinder left, ‘Sergeant’ Shadwell. McKean is always great, and he knows how to make every line count.

Anathema and Newt’s storylines in the book were never the most interesting ones to me, and they aren’t so well fleshed out in the show. An extra episode or two could’ve helped there, along with more from Adam and his childhood friends, as well as the misadventures of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which were some of my favorite segments of the book. Some of those things are a bit cheesy nowadays, but aspects of that were updated decently. Some not so much.

At the heart of everything are Crowley and Aziraphale, friends pretending not to be friends, contrasting personalities of two immortal non-human beings who certainly seem to be more than friends. The show puts the focus on these two, and that is the strength too. We even get a few cameos, some more successful than others. Jon Hamm plays the Archangel Gabriel, leader of the angels and a bureaucratic slick creature, while Frances McDormand plays the voice of God.

Her voiceover narrations are a common replacement for expository lines in the book, which is a clever alternative. It’s sometimes a bit much, which is not a surprise for narration in general, but I like the attempt. There’s overall a sense of optimism and hope despite the show being about the endtimes, because it’s about preventing the end of the world.

Perhaps it’s not laugh out loud funny as much as simply fun to watch, but for those who have an itch for something fantastical that’s not as dark or heavy as Game of Thrones, and are ready for a relatively short six hours or so of a miniseries, Good Omens is a recommended show for the things it does well and it’s easy to ignore the things it doesn’t do as poorly.

It even makes me think a sequel might work, and also a bit more annoyed that American Gods didn’t really seem to know what it was doing. Get it together, and maybe we’ll finally get that Sandman show we’ve wanted for thirty years.