Michael Sheen and David Tennant are on a mission to save the world.
An angel and a demon team up to prevent hell on earth. It's hilarious, writes Dominic Corry.
Good Omens is all about the apocalypse. Armageddon. The End Times. And no, it isn't a reality show. Rather, it's an all-too-timely adaptation of the beloved 1990 fantasy novel by literary icon Terry Pratchett (author of the 80 million+ selling Discworld series) and legendary comic-book writer/novelist Neil Gaiman (Sandman, American Gods).
It follows what happens when an angel named Aziraphale (Michael Sheen - Masters of Sex) and a demon named Crowley (David Tennant – Broadchurch), having grown accustomed to the comforts of life on Earth (well, England), team up to try to prevent the coming apocalypse.
This partly involves their attempting to shape the young spawn of Satan into the kind of person who wouldn't want to bring about hell on earth. It also sees Aziraphale and Crowley nimbly navigating the demands of their respective affiliations (i.e. Heaven, Hell) and doing their darndest to try and head the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse off at the pass.
Although the special effects-laden series is very heightened and very funny, it can't help but tap into very pertinent notions of good versus evil.
"I think part of the joy of Good Omens is the idea that there is good and there is evil but you don't find it in heaven and you don't find it in hell, you find it inside human beings," says Gaiman, who is also the writer/showrunner of the series. "And the frustrating thing is that you can find both good and evil inside so many people, because we're all a contradiction."
The six-part series is overflowing with casting coups (Frances McDormand as the voice of God and Benedict Cumberbatch as Satan) but Sheen and Tennant form its beating heart.
"I was overjoyed to take probably the premiere Scottish actor his generation [Tennant] and the premiere Welsh actor of his generation [Sheen], and make them act English," says Gaiman with a smile. "The book is quintessentially English. It's not a British book, it's an English book. It's a very English sense of humour, [which lets] our Angel and our Demon be in many ways almost more English than they could be if they were English [actors]. They both sort of generate a P.G. Wodehouse-y Englishness that almost doesn't exist in reality."
Sheen is currently earning plaudits for his portrayal of amoral lawyer Roland Blum on the acclaimed drama The Good Fight (available in NZ on Amazon Prime Video). The ethereal, warm Aziraphale couldn't be more different, but Sheen tells TimeOut that both characters reflect his real self.
"I think I'm an amalgamation of the two," says Sheen. "On the surface, I'm more like Aziraphale I think, and underneath the surface I am very murky like Roland."
Tennant brings rock-star swagger to the ostensibly sinister Crowley, who has snake eyes when in human form, necessitating the use of unwieldy coloured contact lenses.
"You have to manage them a bit," Tennant tells TimeOut. "There are big ones, which almost cover the whole eye, and then there's slightly smaller ones when he less demonic, once he's settled into his life on Earth, which were a bit more comfortable."
Tennant even kept them in when Crowley has sunglasses on, which is a lot.
"You can definitely see them shining through," says the former Doctor Who.
In addition to the aforementioned actors, Good Omens also features Mad Men's Jon Hamm (as the angel Gabriel), Miranda Richardson (Blackadder), Nick Offerman (Parks & Recreation) and a bevy of other big-name cameos. Tennant himself was blown away by all the guest stars.
"It gets silly," says Tennant. "I recently saw the episodes for the first time, which was a thrill, and even more thrilling was that as the titles of various episodes come up, there were names coming up [of people] I didn't even know were in the show. Lots of people who were coming in after the fact to do their little cameo here and there, which was very exciting."
Gaiman relied on the book's popularity while casting.
"I knew there were hidden Good Omens fans in the world because they would come up to me and talk about it," says the author. "I'd meet someone like Jon Hamm socially and at some point he'd mention that his favourite book when he was at college was Good Omens and I filed that away."
Gaiman is much more involved in Good Omens than he is in American Gods, another current TV show based on one of his books. He says that's because he owed it to Pratchett, who died in 2015 from a rare form of Alzheimer's, to see complete the project.
"I'd promised Terry that I was going to make sure it would be something that he would love," says Gaiman.
Sheen says the series honours Pratchett and his millions of fans the world over.
"For anyone who's eagle-eyed enough," says Sheen. "They'll be able spot little bits of something to do with Terry all the way through, there's always a little bit of him somewhere in there one way or another."
LOWDOWN
Who: David Tennant and Martin Sheen
What: Good Omens
Where: Streaming on Amazon Prime Video
When: From tomorrow