Good Omens

A demon and an angel team up to stave off the apocalypse and save creation.

Neil Gaiman (Sandman, American Gods) and Terry Pratchett (the Discworld series) co-wrote a novel about a demon and an angel who team up to stave off the apocalypse and save creation from their respective bosses. When Pratchett died in 2015, his final wish was for Gaiman to bring Good Omens to the screen.

The resulting mini-series is stylish and uplifting without being schlocky, largely due to the chemistry between Michael Sheen as the angel Aziraphale and David Tennant as the demon Crowley. The two have gone native after several millennia dining on crepes during the French Revolution and feeding ducks in St. James Park. When the Antichrist shows up, they begin to wonder if humanity may actually be worth keeping.

The show got a boost in the form of a controversy/epic fail. A Christian group gathered 20,000 signatures on a petition demanding that Netflix cancel the show because it "mocks God's wisdom." Just one problem: It was released on Amazon.

Comments

[Adans smith]

I watched it, it had it's moments. I like Bad Boy's more.

[albo]

The book was better, as the cliche goes. But Gaiman did a good job on the series.

[lap83]

do you mean Amazon's The Boys? Or Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys?
Or Will Smith, Martin Lawrence's "Bad Boys" from 95?

[Freddy the Jerk]

Or the less-stupid 1983 Bad Boys (with Ally Sheedy and future communist toady Sean Penn)?

[Robert]

I and a friend binge-watched it recently at the behest of another friend who raved about it. It's fair, but contains some obvious filler and its hilarious premise wears off quickly. Would've been much better at much less length, although our friend's husband thinks my complaint may be an artifact of binge watching rather than seeing it weekly as it was shown on BBC. It also may be an example of the problem with trying to incorporate too much of a book in a screen or stage adaptation. I haven't read the book.

[Robert]

An adaptation should tell its own story, and not be too dependent on the source material. I understand Neil Gaiman may have felt an obligation to present more of Pratchett's story, but that's a problem. My favorite adaptations are the loosest, using the original material as inspiration, not as a blueprint. But I understand that in this case the living co-author felt a need for fidelity to the dead one rather than inserting too much of his own new material.

[BlueStarDragon]

"An adaptation should tell its own story"

Absolutely bull crap, It ideas like this one that has made comic book and sci-fi fans and others fume in rage, plus want to lynch screen writers and directors since the days of films. To make a long argument short when they make the movie different from the books, what has been done is they change the content of a package that promises one thing and then give us some thing different. Is breaking the promise of what is expected.

[Ride 'Em]

I guess you liked the Jack Reacher movies with a 5’8” Tom Cruise playing the 6’5” retired marine. Most, like 99% of the book fans, didn’t.

[Dillinger]

loved it. The Boys too.

[Vesicant]

At least it can't possibly be as bad as the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie.