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A review by inhonoredglory
Good Omens: A Full Cast Production by Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
5.0
I jumped at the chance to get this––how could I resist, high on the announcement of the second season and knowing David Tennant and Michael Sheen reprise their roles as the ineffable husbands in this splendid audio production (and Doctor Who’s Arthur Darvill plays Newt; you can’t get a more sympathetic, charming voice). I haven’t re-read Good Omens since seeing the show for the first time, and revisiting the original world was a treat. I still maintain that GO is one of the best book-to-TV adaptations, retaining every bit of charm as the original but gaining an even more honed emotional depth and rapport for its primary duo.
Some things that stood out on this re-read/listen was how Adam was the voice of most of the book’s thematics––from the comment about their not being any sides to explaining that people just want opposition so they can feel like they're the better gang. The ecological themes are thickly present too, with Adam’s moving observation that fixing our ecological problems “magically” wouldn’t help us learn to stop making bad choices, that “the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they've got a dead whale.” I also appreciated Newt’s sardonic search for meaning, and the hilarious, “then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that.” I can’t.
And then of course, there’s Aziraphale and Crowley, that deft, understated British sappiness coming out at the end before they both decide they must face Satan themselves. The moral contemplations happen afterwards, with Crowley and Aziraphale throwing up the questions that maybe all of it was planned after all. That’s what I love about this book, this particular critique of Christianity, that it’s not as scathing as you’d think it could be. It allows for that bit of open space to wonder, that maybe we’re not all-knowing, either. Good Omens comments on humanity, most of all, and all the silly things we do and all the sure-as-hellfire convictions we hold that are based mostly on our own need to feel important and useful and alive more than anything. That maybe we ought to become a bit more like humble, like little children again, and see stupidity for what it is, and how we ought to look, not Up nor Down, but Inside, and that maybe we ought to try sorting it all out while we’re alive, and that we all of us are human, wonderfully and “perfectly poised exactly between Heaven and Hell.”
Some things that stood out on this re-read/listen was how Adam was the voice of most of the book’s thematics––from the comment about their not being any sides to explaining that people just want opposition so they can feel like they're the better gang. The ecological themes are thickly present too, with Adam’s moving observation that fixing our ecological problems “magically” wouldn’t help us learn to stop making bad choices, that “the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they've got a dead whale.” I also appreciated Newt’s sardonic search for meaning, and the hilarious, “then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that.” I can’t.
And then of course, there’s Aziraphale and Crowley, that deft, understated British sappiness coming out at the end before they both decide they must face Satan themselves. The moral contemplations happen afterwards, with Crowley and Aziraphale throwing up the questions that maybe all of it was planned after all. That’s what I love about this book, this particular critique of Christianity, that it’s not as scathing as you’d think it could be. It allows for that bit of open space to wonder, that maybe we’re not all-knowing, either. Good Omens comments on humanity, most of all, and all the silly things we do and all the sure-as-hellfire convictions we hold that are based mostly on our own need to feel important and useful and alive more than anything. That maybe we ought to become a bit more like humble, like little children again, and see stupidity for what it is, and how we ought to look, not Up nor Down, but Inside, and that maybe we ought to try sorting it all out while we’re alive, and that we all of us are human, wonderfully and “perfectly poised exactly between Heaven and Hell.”