Good Omens - the TV show
Jun. 1st, 2019 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyOK, so with a combination of crap weather and the whole town being closed down for a Marathon, I spent today watching all of Good Omens. Quick thoughts from someone who's read the book a couple of times but not religiously under the cut.
Stuff I really liked:
- It was certainly faithful to the text. Gaiman has said that doing this without Pratchett around made him all the more adamant to not let producers change any of Gaiman's contributions, and it shows. It is, largely, exactly what you'd expect the book to look like on screen, and what's more, they mostly manage to capture that quick-fire delivery of gags, references, asides, etc.
- The leads are perfectly cast. Sheen and Tennant dig into their roles with so much relish. And it's not just them; Michael McKean as Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell, Jon Hamm as Gabriel (though seriously, has Hamm had even one serious role since Mad Men? It seems his entire career these days is, well, hamming it up in comedies), Anna Maxwell Martin as Beelzebub, Miranda Richardson as Madam Tracy, the kid actors, Nick Offerman as the US ambassador, Ned Dennehy as Hastur... A lot of good actors having a ton of fun with their roles here.
- The design of both heaven and hell. The whole show looks beautiful, but I love how they make both angels and demons look both silly and conceited but still dangerous. And put up against rustic Tadfield and bustling London, they both look like pretty awful alternatives.
- The flashbacks. Starting with the actual scene of the expulsion from Eden, and then that quick history of Aziraphale and Crowley through the ages.
- The extended ending. The ending was always one of the weakest parts of the book, and while the series does share some of those problems, it does add a few things that really help out. Rubber duck indeed.
Stuff I was not entirely wowed by:
- It was certainly faithful to the text. For better and for worse, it's extremely fan service-y, checking off scenes and jokes and lines without developing or modernizing the story beyond what the book did. Not that the book has aged that badly, but... Two cases in point:
- The baby switch. In the book, the three-card-monte simile was needed to set up how the switch goes wrong. On screen, it's just an awkward way to explain to us what we're already seeing on screen.
- The Riders. Not only did they cut the Hell's Angels, but the Riders got a lot less room than I'd been hoping for. The design and casting is mostly excellent (and I love that they kept the Delivery Man) but it feels like they're just there, leaving a lot of unexplored metaphor, especially considering that they're adapting a 30-year-old book and might have gotten further into what War, Famine, Pollution and Death mean today as opposed to at the ass-end of the cold war.
- Perhaps as a result of the faithfulness, some of the characters feel underdeveloped. Anathema and Pulsifer especially, who are big POV characters in the book but feel demoted here. This should have been a good opportunity to give them more depth, not less. There's an unfortunate metaphor in how a series about an angel and a demon falling in love with humanity seems far more interested in angels and demons than in humanity.
- The voiceover. I would die for Frances McDormand same as anyone, but at times it feels too much like an excuse to just read the book aloud. You have a camera that can show us these things. Also, is it a good idea to have God narrating a story about the silence of God? I'm... honestly not sure.
- I miss the Buggre Alle This Bible. Not just because it's a good gag, but because it's part of how the series edges away from tackling religion and its role in the story as opposed to just making fun of angels and demons. I'm not asking it to go full Religulous, and thank Insertdeityhere that it doesn't, but for a show about heaven and hell, it's almost scrubbed clinically clean of any mention or parallel or comment on actual faith.
Stuff I actively disliked:
- Nothing, really. It's brilliant in flashes, overly duty-bound at some points, but it's never actually bad. We got a decent adaptation, not a great one but not an embarrassing one either. Rejoice.
So what did everyone else think?
Stuff I really liked:
- It was certainly faithful to the text. Gaiman has said that doing this without Pratchett around made him all the more adamant to not let producers change any of Gaiman's contributions, and it shows. It is, largely, exactly what you'd expect the book to look like on screen, and what's more, they mostly manage to capture that quick-fire delivery of gags, references, asides, etc.
- The leads are perfectly cast. Sheen and Tennant dig into their roles with so much relish. And it's not just them; Michael McKean as Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell, Jon Hamm as Gabriel (though seriously, has Hamm had even one serious role since Mad Men? It seems his entire career these days is, well, hamming it up in comedies), Anna Maxwell Martin as Beelzebub, Miranda Richardson as Madam Tracy, the kid actors, Nick Offerman as the US ambassador, Ned Dennehy as Hastur... A lot of good actors having a ton of fun with their roles here.
- The design of both heaven and hell. The whole show looks beautiful, but I love how they make both angels and demons look both silly and conceited but still dangerous. And put up against rustic Tadfield and bustling London, they both look like pretty awful alternatives.
- The flashbacks. Starting with the actual scene of the expulsion from Eden, and then that quick history of Aziraphale and Crowley through the ages.
- The extended ending. The ending was always one of the weakest parts of the book, and while the series does share some of those problems, it does add a few things that really help out. Rubber duck indeed.
Stuff I was not entirely wowed by:
- It was certainly faithful to the text. For better and for worse, it's extremely fan service-y, checking off scenes and jokes and lines without developing or modernizing the story beyond what the book did. Not that the book has aged that badly, but... Two cases in point:
- The baby switch. In the book, the three-card-monte simile was needed to set up how the switch goes wrong. On screen, it's just an awkward way to explain to us what we're already seeing on screen.
- The Riders. Not only did they cut the Hell's Angels, but the Riders got a lot less room than I'd been hoping for. The design and casting is mostly excellent (and I love that they kept the Delivery Man) but it feels like they're just there, leaving a lot of unexplored metaphor, especially considering that they're adapting a 30-year-old book and might have gotten further into what War, Famine, Pollution and Death mean today as opposed to at the ass-end of the cold war.
- Perhaps as a result of the faithfulness, some of the characters feel underdeveloped. Anathema and Pulsifer especially, who are big POV characters in the book but feel demoted here. This should have been a good opportunity to give them more depth, not less. There's an unfortunate metaphor in how a series about an angel and a demon falling in love with humanity seems far more interested in angels and demons than in humanity.
- The voiceover. I would die for Frances McDormand same as anyone, but at times it feels too much like an excuse to just read the book aloud. You have a camera that can show us these things. Also, is it a good idea to have God narrating a story about the silence of God? I'm... honestly not sure.
- I miss the Buggre Alle This Bible. Not just because it's a good gag, but because it's part of how the series edges away from tackling religion and its role in the story as opposed to just making fun of angels and demons. I'm not asking it to go full Religulous, and thank Insertdeityhere that it doesn't, but for a show about heaven and hell, it's almost scrubbed clinically clean of any mention or parallel or comment on actual faith.
Stuff I actively disliked:
- Nothing, really. It's brilliant in flashes, overly duty-bound at some points, but it's never actually bad. We got a decent adaptation, not a great one but not an embarrassing one either. Rejoice.
So what did everyone else think?
no subject
Date: 2019-06-25 07:53 pm (UTC)Yay!
Also, I knew that the Crowley/Aziraphale angle had been used as a focus for the show, but reading the book really throws that into stark relief.
I do love that they make it a lot more obvious without the couple of gay jokes that the 30-year-old book stuffs in there.
I'm also amused that they're so angry about 'the occult' and not Teh Gay.
Apparently their petition complains about how "an angel and a demon are good friends", so they either haven't seen it or it went completely over their heads.
Also,
no subject
Date: 2019-06-25 08:19 pm (UTC)Speaking of... My other half loved the show (this from the man I am usually referring to as 'Darcy' because he is an unrepentant snob when it comes to anything TV/movie related), but did remark that Michael Sheen's performance as Aziraphale was a little OTT. At which point I whipped out the book and read him the bit about 'gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide'. He conceded the point that MS was clearly just playing the part as it was written. :)
Apparently their petition complains about how "an angel and a demon are good friends", so they either haven't seen it or it went completely over their heads.
That's hilarious. And considering that they think it's on Netflix, presumably they haven't seen any...
The tweet very nearly killed me. Except I am already dead because of this. But the tweet made me do a lot of the same undignified noises.