This is unusual for me – reviewing a TV series (on Amazon TV). I don’t watch an awful lot of TV series – I tend to get bored with them – unless they’re semi-documentaries like The Looming Tower or Tom Hanks’ From the Earth to the Moon.
However, I did note that Good Omens was available on Amazon TV. I’m never 100% convinced about Neil Gaiman’s books, but I do like Terry Pratchett, and I had enjoyed Good Omens as a book, though the end went a little too fast and left me confused. So I decided to watch the first episode of the Amazon production, and I was hooked.
Somehow, the verbal paradoxes and twisted logic of the book made it onto the screen, partly due to the voiceovers by God which played the same sort of role as The Book in HHGTTG.
What really made it for me, though, were the characters of and the relationship between the angel and demon (Aziraphale and Crowley) who came through beautifully. I went into there with almost no expectations of how the actors would come over. I had heard of David Tennant but couldn’t tell you anything about any other parts he’d played except for his role as Doctor Who (which I have never seen) and would never recognise him, and had never heard of Michael Sheen.
How can you manage to be so ignorant? you ask. Lack of interest in “celebrities” and in fictional drama, and nearly 30 years out of the country, I answer.
But what really made it for me is that the ending, complex in the book, all started to make perfect sense in the TV series.
The special effects were, of course, wonderful and the makeup and the characterisation of some of the minor characters was great (I especially liked Beelzebub, and Gabriel). Definitely worth giving up three evenings for.