Not all Good Omens fans were happy when Neil Gaiman fulfilled the promise he made to Terry Pratchett to adapt the classic angel and demons novel they had signed together. Both authors tried for decades, until in 2019 the homonymous series premiered on Amazon Prime Video, with the same load of irony around the concepts of good and evil that appeared in the book. Pratchett died in 2015, Gaiman decided by popular request to continue expanding the story alone, with a second season that moves away from the original content and whose script of the six chapters he writes himself. The new plots are inspired by a sequel he was preparing with his creative partner before his death, say those responsible for the project.
More information
An angel and a demon, united against the apocalypse
One of the reasons that convinced fans of the initial text and new followers captured through the screen is the duo of actors who play its protagonists. The prestigious British performers Michael Sheen (Masters of Sex) and David Tennant (Broadchurch, Doctor Who) return to their characters to continue exploring the particular emotional connection between the angel Azirafel and the demon Crowley. After observing their vicissitudes since the time of Adam and Eve, both fall in love with the benefits of an earthly existence to which they add the supernatural privileges they enjoy. Neither one is so good nor the other is so bad. It is the law of life and "the realization that both are very bad at doing their job," says an ironic Tennant during an interview in London. It happened days before the beginning of the actors' strike called by the Hollywood unions to join the screenwriters' strike.
If in the first episodes both allied to avoid the Apocalypse, in this new batch, which arrives on the digital platform this Friday, July 28, the angel (Sheen) and the devil (Tennant) coexist in the central and bourgeois London neighborhood of Soho. When the archangel Gabriel, played by Jon Hamm, reappears naked and without memory at the door of Azirafel's bookstore, the new human life of both comes to an end. They have to discover what has happened between heaven and hell and what consequences it may have for the mortals in the middle of both.
Jon Hamm returns to the series as Archangel Gabriel.Amazon Prime Video
Both Sheen and Tennant admit to feeling less pressure this time around, when it comes to embodying characters so adored by a solid fan base that the Good Omens text has accumulated over the years. "During the first season, we were left wondering if fans, myself included, were going to accept our way of understanding characters that they were very passionate about and imagined in a very specific way," Sheen begins. For Tennant, the fact that Gaiman continues to be on his side, also serving as showrunner and executive producer of the second season, legitimizes his work. Both actors talk about this return precisely in a luxurious hotel in Soho, a neighborhood "as paradisiacal as hellish to live, which summarizes very well the essence of the series," says Tennant, in this meeting at the beginning of July.
The spirit of Terry Pratchett is still present in this second season, through the heirs of his legacy, who are also part of the production of the project. Although a sequel to Good Omens was never written, "what would happen to these two characters after the book ended was a recurring conversation between Neil and Terry for decades. A lot of those ideas are in these new chapters," says Sheen, who invites the viewer familiar with the original content to be attentive to the small tributes in memory of his friend that Gaiman hides in these episodes. "We continue to recreate the same universe that a voice as unique as Pratchett's built in his day," Tennant expands.
Those responsible for the series detected that one of the hooks that the audience enjoyed the most in the first season were the time jumps that showed the friendship between Azirafel and Crowley over the centuries. Those historical winks are still present in the new installments, despite being set in today's London. The exteriors of the contradictory Soho district were actually recreated in a large recording studio in Scotland.
Michael Sheen (left) and David Tennant, during the filming of the second season of 'Good Omens'. Courtesy of Amazon Studios (Courtesy of Amazon Studios)
For Sheen, Good Omens' particular sense of humor is another hallmark that they have not been able or willing to lose. "In the midst of that epic of heaven and hell and their supernatural forces, there's enormous humanity in their characters. Our angel and our devil, like any of us, try to do the right thing in the best possible way, but they realize that maybe they are not very good at it. There's something very funny and endearing about that paradox." In this way, complex moral and philosophical dilemmas border at all times on the red line of absurdity. There is a lot of nonsense in the presence of Jon Hamm, who already showed his comic vis in his appearances in the Tina Fey comedy 30 Rock just after jumping to fame as the dour Don Draper of Mad Men.
When a clueless Christian collective in the United States accused Good Omens of "normalizing Satanism," wrongly requesting its cancellation from Netflix instead of Amazon Prime Video, the anecdote further increased the popularity of fiction. "Come now, if all the demons we show are completely useless. It's not exactly good propaganda from hell," Tennant laughs. "It's a comedy about an angel and a demon who find common ground of coexistence. Is there anything more empathetic than that?" he continues.
In fact, much of the audience has seen in the connection between Azirafel and Crowley a potential gay love story that they wish Gaiman dared to explore. They call them the "ineffable husbands," winking at one of the favorite adjectives the cheesy angel protagonist likes to use. "These people even create parallel amateur fictions that tell this romance," says Sheen, admired. "You have to treat with care something so relevant, for its social tone, and so wonderful as to be able to fire the imagination of others to the point of creating their own stories," concludes the actor. Neil Gaiman, the actors confess, has also been passionate about this reaction from his readers and viewers.
🌙 pic.twitter.com/obzCwAD1BH
— aneh | beanpole and beanbag (@hg_aneh) July 25, 2023
Doodle Before Bed Goodnight #IneffableHusbands pic.twitter.com/UchbxRScT5
— sage (Mike Lover) Comms Open (@sadgefroggy) July 22, 2023
You can follow EL PAĂŤS TELEVISIĂ“N on Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.