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: 2019-07-01 02:28 pm (UTC)...Anyway, I then had to watch Paul Schrader's pseudo-remake First Reformed as well, which makes a lot of interesting choices, but one really interesting side: In Winter Light, the whole impetus of the plot is that one character is having an existential crisis because he's terrified of nuclear holocaust (hey, it was 1962). In the 2018 remake, the same character is going through largely the same crisis but because of climate collapse; the first half of the movie plays almost exactly identically, but since the change in times (both the nature of apocalypse and the change in setting and culture) demands action rather than just coping mechanisms, the whole second half becomes very different.
I'm not saying Good Omens should have changed everything about the second half, but I thought it was an interesting parallel.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-23 09:39 pm (UTC)I have one social media acquaintance who posts regularly about the Aziraphale/Crowley ship, and it does occur to me that the A/C story is the one thing in Good Omens that is *least* time-sensitive, in that they're immortal beings. The non-heteronormativity is something that is easier to portray on TV now than 20 years ago, certainly, but I think it does maybe hint at some of the ways in which the show's deep focus on that ship is somewhat at odds with commenting on our current troubles as individual humans, like if BtVS were just the scene where Anyanka explains the inevitability of the proletariat uprising to Halfrek. Which is only a problem insofar as GO does seem to be trying to be that for us.
But anyway yeah, along the lines of what you're saying, Aziraphale and Crowley dropping out in order to live out their (indefinite) lives quietly rather than having to actively work to bring about the Apocalypse is more appropriate for a time in which the primary problem was the intractable war between two behemoths, where if everyone just stopped and hung out with each other instead everything would mostly be okay. That's not really our problem now. I mean, it wasn't *really* our problem then either. But the message was probably more internally coherent for the major problems of the time. It's still true that it's better to drop out and have quiet, pleasant lives than to actively make things worse, but as you say there's a certain need for action now that there wasn't before. (Though in reality it's also unclear whether we aren't as powerless as we were in 1962/1990, or more so, but still....)
no subject
Date: 2019-10-25 02:00 pm (UTC)I didn't actually know that First Reformed was playing with the same type of story (I mostly just knew "anxious priest") but that makes sense.
It's more than just the type of story, the first half of the movie is a remake in all but name, including the very austere style. After that, the difference in story (and it being, well, a Paul Schrader movie) turns it into something different. But yeah, Ozu might be a good comparison too.
I've spent 2019 watching one Bergman movie per week (curse you, huge DVD box set they released for his 100th birthday last year) and... it gets a bit much, but very few of his movies are boring. I'm just constantly amused by how they were sold in the US. Viz this trailer for The Silence.
I think it does maybe hint at some of the ways in which the show's deep focus on that ship is somewhat at odds with commenting on our current troubles as individual humans, like if BtVS were just the scene where Anyanka explains the inevitability of the proletariat uprising to Halfrek. Which is only a problem insofar as GO does seem to be trying to be that for us.
Heh. I like that comparison.
Aziraphale and Crowley dropping out in order to live out their (indefinite) lives quietly rather than having to actively work to bring about the Apocalypse is more appropriate for a time in which the primary problem was the intractable war between two behemoths, where if everyone just stopped and hung out with each other instead everything would mostly be okay. That's not really our problem now.
That's a really good point. At the same time, with a bit of hindsight, I feel like there's a lot more to the story than just a cold war metaphor. The kids' rejection of the pre-programmed apocalypse that's enabled by A&C works, even if I think the series could have made more of it. In a way, it feels like the ending doesn't so much solve the old conflict as render it irrelevant; heaven and hell become interchangeable and therefore pointless, A&C get to live together as retirees, and the next apocalypse is a different matter. I'm not sure that's a good ending, it certainly doesn't dial back the nostalgia factor, but it's one that's at lest internally consistent.