Good Omens

It's the 30th anniversary of the publication of Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. For many of my friends, this is a very important and beloved book. I actually only finally read it this year, though I did listen to the radio version from a few years back - I somehow never quite caught the Pratchett bug in the way many others did. It feels more like Pratchett than Gaiman, particularly with the footnotes, but I think Gaiman had yet to find his own voice as a novelist (his first solo novel, Neverwhere, is heavily influenced by his friend Douglas Adams).

It's a perfectly fine and enjoyable novel. But it didn't quite grab me the way it's evidently grabbed others. I feel that perhaps it has suffered, for me, from the weight of expectations built up from what everyone else had said about it.

I read the novel because the tv series hit the BBC this year. That also came with a lot of baggage in terms of what people who saw it on Amazon last year thought of it - everybody loved it, as the perfect version of the novel that they also loved. Well, I'm pleased to say that I also love the series.  It's mostly a faithful adaptation, but Gaiman, who wrote the screenplay and oversaw the whole project, has at least been prepared to make changes where he felt it was necessary.

Most significantly, the balance of the story has shifted. The novel is fairly well split between the three converging stories of Adam Young and his friends, the demon Crowley and the Angel Aziraphale, and Anathema Device and Newton Pulsifer. Twenty-nine years later, Gaiman has evidently decided that it's actually the Crowley and Aziraphale show. Everyone else still gets their stories, but Crowley and Aziraphale get more. Only they get new scenes, giving their back story, and a new ending to the story.

It helps that both roles are perfectly cast. The radio series did okay, with Mark Heap as Aziraphale and Peter Serafinowicz, but TV gets Michael Sheen and David Tennant. Tennant in particular is on fire, often literally so, and Sheen plays off against him perfectly. There are some good turns in the rest of the cast - an almost unrecognisable Michael McKean as Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell, and a non-annoying performance by Jack Whitehall. And making Frances McDormand's voice of God the narrator is a touch of genius. I could do without Benedict Cumberbatch's voice of an unconvincing CGI Satan, but that's the only slight misstep, and I can forgive that for everything else (including the constant Doctor Who jokes). Very much recommended. And you should also seek out the new 'Lockdown' mini-episode.  

Good Omens was 2020 Books #3 and 2020 Movies #3.