[televsion] Good Omens

Our First Look at David Tennant and Michael Sheen in Good Omens

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Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s delightful novel about an angel and demon working together in the face of the incoming divine apocalypse is coming to live-action in 2019—but now we have our first official look at Crowley and Aziraphale.

Neil Gaiman unveiled the first picture of Tennant and Sheen in costume to celebrate the beginning of filming on the six-part series, set to air through Amazon Video in the US, and on BBC Two in the UK. Honestly, the costumes are great, but what you’re really here for is a bleach-blond Sheen as the fussy Aziraphale and a long, red-haired Tennant as rebellious demon Crowley, both looking equally amazing and absurd:

I am thrilled about all the casting choices I've heard about this. This was one of my absolutely favorite books as a young man, so my hopes are high that it turns out well. After how well Amazon did The Tick, I have a good feeling about it.

From Neil Gaiman's twitter

Here is a photograph of the Metatron's trailer. Next to it is a very rumpled showrunner. Next to it is our Metatron, an unrumpled Sir Derek Jacobi. "It's not every day you get to play the Voice of God," he said

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Title sequence.

(Spoiler-tagged for those who really really want to go in cold.)

Spoiler:

Airing May 31 on Amazon Prime.

Aww, I thought it was supposed to be early 2019. I was getting excited and started reading the book again.

Strewth wrote:

Aww, I thought it was supposed to be early 2019. I was getting excited and started reading the book again.

I always thought "early [YEAR]" was always code for "slightly before the middle of [YEAR]"

Trailer. (Spoiler-tagged for your convenience.)

Spoiler:

Watched that stupid trailer 5 times grinning like an idiot. Gimme!

Really looking forward to this. Is there a release date yet?

Nevin73 wrote:

Really looking forward to this. Is there a release date yet?

May something. 25th? 31st? (off the top of my head, i'll bet google knows)

31st. Further away than I would like but it’ll get here soon enough.

It's now live! (Perhaps it was 12:01am, May 31, London time?)

I'm watching episode one instead of going to bed! The system works!

Edit: I will be tired and grumpy later this morning, but that was worth it. <3

It's very good! (Family binge watch of the whole thing for Friday night, complete)

Starting this with my wife this weekend. I read this book sometime in the mid 00s and remember absolutely nothing about it other than a vague recollection of enjoying it, and I love many of the actors in this, so, high hopes.

I squeezed in the first episode this morning and can't wait to binge the rest this weekend!

Watched the first three episodes and not feeling the show. Just finding it extremely dull. I like the look of the show. I like the relationship between the demon and angel. I was really looking forward to this after seeing the trailer.

I've finished two episodes, and it captures the feel of the book extremely well. If you like the book, you're quite, quite likely to fall in love with this show, I suspect.

If you don't know the book, hmm. It's Pratchett humor, and he tends toward the slightly surreal and absurdist, and this show reflects that exactly. The humor is very dry, and the sheer strangeness of things is much more apparent in video than it is in writing, at least for me. The opening sequence has a strong Monty Python feel to it, and the overall pacing has a very specific British sensibility that I can't really name. I've seen it before, but I don't know what it's called, and I can't summon any other specific examples.

I'm enjoying the hell out of it, but this will be a weird viewing experience for people with no exposure to Pratchett. It's exactly what the fans would want, and will absolutely be a cult classic series. It might, however, take a decade or so for the rest of the world to catch up. I'm not sure if this will be an immediately popular show. It'll be absolutely loved by everyone in another ten to twenty years, but I'm not sure they'll love it today.

We only were able to watch the first two episodes last night, but my son said it’s the most faithful adaptation of a book to film he’s seen. I agree. I’m loving the casting too. Have had a large grin on my face while watching.

So, having watched it, though not having read the book in a few years:

Spoiler:

Crowley and Aziraphale have a much more screen time than I remember them having in the novel. Not that it's a terrible thing, both the actors do excellent work and I was constantly amused when they were on screen.

In contrast Anathema and Newton are bare sketches of characters in this. Anathema is better off, I think she's given more to work with and is better acted. Newton is just a plot device with a "NICE GUY" sign hung over his neck.

Them are okay, though Adam's heel turn is much more abrupt than I remember the book being. The book showed off his imperiousness with Them, showing his rising melomania with the Atlantis stuff etc. Here he seems to see a picture and BAM he's the evil Antichrist.

Overall I enjoyed it but I don't think it holds up as well without prior knowledge of the characters. It's a great addition but a poor introduction.

Watched the first episdoe and loved it. Not read any Pratchett but have seen tv adaptions before. Also his humour and style is very British so easy to get on bored with. Also that casting, can't wait to watch more and only didn't because another show was about to be on telly. (I know how old fashioned)

Finished it yesterday and it was a complete joy.

Dragonfly and I finished it tonight, and enjoyed it. I have not read the book. She has, but it has been a long time.

Would recommend.

I was today years old when I realized David Morissey sounds like Liam Neeson.

I really enjoyed it, though I'm sad that they cut out the

Spoiler:

other horsemen

Otherwise, even though they certainly omitted or changed quite a few things they still managed to stay surprisingly true to the source material.

Was going to start watching it last night as I just got prime video on my smart TV. Wound up watching the first 6 episodes of the tick instead.

Thank you for my pornography!

I watched the first episode with my wife. I liked it okay; she was more into it than I was. One observation I'd read in a review that felt very true to me is that the show is very engaging when Tennant and Sheen are on screen, but anytime they're not there it suddenly feels quite dull. The first episode did not feel well-paced to me, I'm hoping some of that may have been just the need to set everything up.

mindset.threat wrote:

Thank you for my pornography!

We fellow humans are so embarrassed by our pornography we must buy it in private

bnpederson wrote:

So, having watched it, though not having read the book in a few years:

Spoiler:

Crowley and Aziraphale have a much more screen time than I remember them having in the novel. Not that it's a terrible thing, both the actors do excellent work and I was constantly amused when they were on screen.

In contrast Anathema and Newton are bare sketches of characters in this. Anathema is better off, I think she's given more to work with and is better acted. Newton is just a plot device with a "NICE GUY" sign hung over his neck.

Them are okay, though Adam's heel turn is much more abrupt than I remember the book being. The book showed off his imperiousness with Them, showing his rising melomania with the Atlantis stuff etc. Here he seems to see a picture and BAM he's the evil Antichrist.

Overall I enjoyed it but I don't think it holds up as well without prior knowledge of the characters. It's a great addition but a poor introduction.

Yeah, I think the show would have benefitted from having another episode or two to fully introduce and flesh out some of the characters.

Spoiler:

Newt was a pretty one-note character in the book too so there's only so much they can do with him, but in the book he finds Shadwell's newspaper advert and chooses to join the Witchfinder Army, rather than in the show where he just runs into Shadwell on the street and gets badgered into joining. Joining the army is one of his only major moments of agency in the book so it seems odd to take that away.

Adam and the Them really could have used a lot more screen time to introduce them and show Adam's gradual change into the Antichrist, rather than having him just suddenly go full Exorcist and start flying around. I also just think having him fly around with glowing eyes was a bad choice - in the book he still acts like his usual self, he just starts saying absolutely terrifying things - rather than talking about some new make-believe game suddenly he's talking about killing people and dividing up continents with the same childlike enthusiasm, which IMO is more terrifying than how it was portrayed in the show.

I also have a couple minor gripes about how the final confrontation went down:

First, I don't like how the Them defeated the Horsemen in the show. In the book, they had to banish them using homemade versions of the sword, scales, and crown - this was a nice callback to their initial summoning, plus it was very fitting that the kids who spend all their time playing make-believe effectively ended the apocalypse in the same way, by pretending that a stick was a sword and so on. Stabbing them with a flaming sword while shouting about peace and the environment and healthy lunches felt pretty lame in comparison.

Second, I feel like Crowley's little time-stop trick contradicted the core premise of the story. In the book, Adam basically stopped the apocalypse of his own volition, with very little interference from Aziraphale and Crowley - the whole point was that since he grew up without any demonic or angelic interference, he became just a normal human instead of the Antichrist he was supposed to be. I feel like adding a last-minute conversation where an angel and a demon tell him what to do detracted from that point a bit.

Also, still sad about the Other Horsemen - sure they don't add much to the story, but that bit of the book is just pure Pratchett silliness and I love it.