I’ve started to watch the TV mini series called ‘Good Omens’ on Amazon Prime, a series based on a 1990’s book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, to give it its full title, ‘ Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch‘, which is bit long especially for television.
It’s an Amazon / BBC production and rather good it is too…
According to the IMDb its: A tale of the bungling of Armageddon features an angel, a demon, an eleven-year-old Antichrist, and a doom-saying witch.
Unless you’ve been living in a railway tunnel for your entire life (a bit noisy but also a tad dark), you can expect Good Omens to feature the kind of wacky humor especially from author Terry Pratchett, although in this adaptation for the small screen, it is never over the top or too silly to distract from the story.
Although I’ve read many Pratchett books over the years Good Omens was not one of them so I can’t compare the two. I’ve also not read any of Gaiman’s books sad to say.
The leading actors David Tennant and Michael Sheen do a brilliant job playing the lead roles as Crowley (a demon / fallen angel) and Aziraphale (a good angel) respectively. The Scottish and Welsh duo weave some Celtic magic together in this series, perhaps slightly more so from Michael Sheen in my opinion just for the amount of body language and expressions the Welshman can pull off, he really does play a good good angel.
Not taking anything away from David Tennant who plays a rather cool and hip Demon.
You’d probably recognize some other familiar faces such as Michael Mckeen (Spinal Tap, Better Call Saul), Bill Paterson (The Witches, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People) Josie Lawrence, (who I’ve always had a bit of thing for) (Robin Hood, EastEnders) to name but a few.
Seeing as Pratchett has written fantasy work, especially humorous fantasy there are plenty of subtle jokes to go around speaking of which, there are a couple of cameos from Mark Gatiss and Steve Pemberton (The League of Gentleman) which I thought added a nice touch of dark humor to the occasion. I won’t mention what parts they play and I won’t give you any spoilers here. Reece Shearsmith also from The League plays a small cameo in a separate scene.
There is also the very talented and witch-like Anathema Device, played by Adria Ajona a half Puerto Rican, half Guatemalan model / actress.
If you haven’t watched it you should even if you’ve never read a Pratchett or Gaiman book before – Think Harry Potter with humor (but never too over the top) with an excellent cast, brilliant production and screen play. It’s thoroughly heavenly / hellish entertainment.
Good Good indeed.
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