An angel and a demon, who happen to be best friends, work together to prevent the apocalypse. That’s the plot of Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, a novel cowritten by fantasy titans Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett released back in 1990. At long last, Amazon is adapting the book as a limited series. A trailer debuted at New York Comic Con. Have a watch:
David Tennant (Doctor Who) plays Crowley the demon while Michael Sheen (Masters of Sex) plays Aziraphale the angel. By the looks of it, the both of them were born to play these roles.
Jon Hamm (Mad Men) will star as the Archangel Gabriel. Gaiman, who wrote the scripts for the series, expanded the role especially for Hamm. “Once we had finished writing Good Omens, back in the dawn of prehistory, Terry Pratchett and I started plotting a sequel,” Gaiman explained to Radio Times. “There would have been a lot of angels in the sequel. When, almost thirty years later, I started writing Good Omens for TV, one thing I knew was that our angels would have to be in there.”
"The leader of these angels is Gabriel. He is everything that Aziraphale isn’t: he’s tall, good-looking, charismatic and impeccably dressed. We were fortunate that Jon Hamm was available, given that he is already all of these things without even having to act. We were even more fortunate that he’s a fan of the books and a remarkable actor."
Speaking to a crowd at NYCC over the weekend, Hamm sounded pretty excited about it, too. “I am a big fan of the book,” he said. “A few years passed and got an email in my inbox from Neil while shooting a film in Atlanta. It said, ‘We are doing Good Omens and there is this part that is not really in the book. Would you consider?’ And I just wrote back, ‘Yes! I don’t care what the part is. I just know it will be awesome.'”
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The show is a passion project for Gaiman, who wrote it in part to honor the memory of Terry Pratchett, who died in 2015. “ wrote me a letter saying: ‘You have to do this because I want to watch it before the lights go out,” Gaiman told The Guardian. “‘You have the passion of the old girl that I have.’
"Then he died, which made it a last request, so I spent 18 months writing six scripts, reinventing it as television while trying to stay faithful – because we have tens of millions of people who would murder me if it’s not – but I wanted surprises."
Alongside its Lord of the Rings show and Wheel of Time series, Good Omens looks like another opportunity for Amazon to try and corner the market on fantasy programming post-Game of Thrones. But unlike those other two shows, it sounds like Good Omens will cap out at six episodes, which is refreshing. The trailer looks like a lot of fun, and it’s nice knowing I’ll be able to enjoy this series without worrying whether I have to commit to it longterm.
Good Omens will debut on Amazon Video in 2019.
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h/t Variety