Good Omens

The novel from 1990 is one of my very favourites, and manages to be better than anything else I have read by either of the two authors individually - this includes over 30 of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, although I must admit I am less familiar with the oeuvre of Neil Gaiman, seeing as that includes a lot of comics and short stories.

Good Omens sends up The Omen film series (as well as a few other films in the very niche sub-genre of 'Apocalyptic Antichrist Horror') while at the same time requiring its readers to have no knowledge of the thing it is sending up.

From the running gag about Elvis being still alive (which made it into the TV series in the form of an 'Easter Egg' for fans of the book to spot) to the footnote explaining pre-decimalisation British currency, the book is packed with witty wordplay and Laugh-Out-Loud comic moments for the reader, even as the characters are taking very seriously the imminent rise of the Antichrist and ending of the world.

But I'm now going to spend the rest of this post talking about the TV adaptation from 2019, starting with

The Good

It was just so much fun to see the TV series after so many years of waiting. It's such a great story and has deserved to get a decent visual (film or TV) adaptation for so long. The BBC Radio 4 series was good, and contained a near-perfect cast (arguably even better on the whole than the TV series), but the lack of visuals left it somehow feeling incomplete and unsatisfying.

The decision to have God as the omniscient narrator delivering many of the book's asides in the style of the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy was a great one (even if Her casting was, shall we say... unorthodox), allowing many of my favourite moments to make it to screen, including Aziraphale and Crowley dancing - on the head of a pin or otherwise - and Mr R P Tyler's hesitation over pointing out that Crowley's car is on fire.

David Tennant and Michael (not Martin) Sheen as Crowley and Aziraphale bring a kind of star quality to the TV series (as well as having amazing chemistry together, as was later also seen in their lockdown sitcom Staged). No wonder their parts were expanded to make them indisputably the central characters, rather than the more ensemble cast of the novel.

They would not have been my first choice for playing the characters - in my opinion Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap from the radio series are more faithful to the book versions - but Sheen & Tennant won me over very quickly.

The final item for this list is Dog, who steals every scene he's in.

The Bad

The WW2 Nazis scene with Mark Gatiss and Steve Pemberton at the start of episode three I found to be unfunny and way too OTT, bordering on the level of Panto (when Tennant arrives in the scene he reminded me of some of the more annoying character tics from his time in Doctor Who). I can see its purpose in both continuing to develop Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship over the course of history (including setting up the holy water plot device for later) and establishing the significance of The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter (Witch), but I think the screen time spent on this scene could have been better used by doing the subplot from the novel about the publishers Bilton and Scaggs, they of the three great publishing disasters, who could even have been played just as well by Gatiss and Pemberton.

Jack Whitehall as Newton Pulsifer is easily the most miscast actor in this. He could have been fine in the small role of Witchfinder Major Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer, but not as Newt, one of the main characters and a personal favourite of mine from the novel. He is the Martin Freeman of this series - he just rubs me up the wrong way every time he's on screen.

Some of the CGI is unforgivably bad, such as the explosion at the burning of Agnes Nutter - made worse by the fact that, like the tank in the third cliffhanger of Robot, we see it more than once - or the appearance of Satan in the last episode that manages to look worse than the CGI monster in the Doctor Who episode The Satan Pit, despite that being from 13 years earlier.

This is all the more surprising because so much of the SFX in Good Omens are really effective, from their realisation of the walled Garden of Eden through to the M25 motorway being on fire, and it makes the poor effects stand out even more.

And, to be clear, I am not including in this category the CGI that was made deliberately unconvincing 'bad' for comic effect, such as Dog's original hellhound face or Crowley's scary face from when he's scaring the manny from The Thick of It.

The Neither Good Nor Bad On The Whole, or The Equally Good And Bad (Do You See What I Did There?)

The addition of so much extra material, which mainly serves to increase the focus on Crowley and Aziraphale, leaves less screen time for other things from the book, such as the Four Horsemen. They are underdeveloped as antagonists as a result, certainly compared to Gabriel, Hastur, and the other angel and demon antagonists who we do spend time with since they are personal antagonists to the two leads.

Scenes taken from the book establishing War and Pollution much earlier in the story were filmed but consigned to the DVD Special Features only. I think including these would have helped establish their presence earlier, so their first appearances aren't when they are receiving their packages. And that's without me mentioning the other Four Horsemen, who are left out of the TV series entirely.

The largest addition comes with the extended ending, giving the story an additional climax centred on Aziraphale and Crowley, as they face their reckoning with Heaven and Hell respectively. Now, let's be honest here, the ending to the book is its weakest part - after a long, wonderful build up to the end of the world, it ends way too suddenly (the plot, I mean, not the world). Not for the first time in this article will I compare Good Omens to the books of Douglas Adams, when I say the abruptness of the ending is comparable to that found in his Dirk Gently novels, and for those too this is their biggest flaw.

Therefore, making an improvement to the ending was virtually the only way in which the TV series could improve upon the book. I'm no adaptation purist (although I hate gratuitous changes, such as those found in abundance in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy), so would have counted this among The Good, except for the aforementioned fact that the additions necessitated the omission of other scenes I would have dearly loved to see on screen, something that belongs with The Bad.

So let's call this one, in the end, on balance, a draw.