I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t necessarily like a lot of Neil Gaiman’s novels. They’re excellent on worldbuilding and characters but not always the best on, well, plot. But I do like Good Omens. It’s funny, it’s witty, and it’s clever. What is not to love? An angel and a demon work together to avoid the apocalypse.
(It’s also what got me into the Discworld novels, which I am very slowly working through and enjoy quite a bit.)
When Amazon said they were going to make a miniseries of Good Omens, and that they’d secured Neil Gaiman to do the screenplay, it seemed the best possible outcome. A miniseries isn’t a movie–you can fit a lot more into it, so it’s closer to the book. And it had excellent casting with David Tennant and Michael Sheen.
If you haven’t seen the miniseries, you really should, by the way.
And I would say that the miniseries is better than the book. If you read the book, Aziraphale and Crowley are present throughout, but they’re less fleshed out, and they’re not necessarily the most…useful characters. They kind of bumble through the whole book.
The miniseries really allowed the characters and worldbuilding to flourish. Heaven and Hell are such separate and distinct aesthetics, and they make perfect sense, and, without changing the plot too much, Crowley and Aziraphale have much more agency and really step into the parts they should have had all along.
(Also, there’s a second season coming out TOMORROW. Ask me how many times I’ve watched the trailer. I’m so very excited. It looks amazing. I was a little hesitant when I heard they were going to do a second season, but I guess it’s based off of notes from a potential sequel that never got written.)
Basically, they took the book, and somehow made it even better. It truly is amazing.
Thoughts, squiders? Excited for Good Omens season 2?
