Dark versus Light: adaptations.
Seeing your favourite book turn up on the screen is always a tricky business. Especially if it actually IS your favourite book.
I don’t have one favourite book, but Good Omens is certainly up there with
‘The phantom of the Opera’, ‘And then there were none’, ‘The fifth Elephant’ and ‘The cold fire trilogy’.
Meaning: I read the book five times at least.
There will be a million things you are going to dislike about the visualisation. These will be little details: nitpickings –like walking through a wonderful garden and being annoyed by a coo-coo calling because you would’ve preferred a red robin.
This will happen when an adaptation of a loved object occurs. The point here being is how much leeway you are going to allow the adaptation.
A simple example: Michael McKean’s portrayal of Shadwell in this television mini-series is sheer perfection, but! Nitpicking- he’s too tall and his teeth are too perfect.
And that’s the level Good Omens is forcing me to. We’re not talking Super Mario Bros (1992) here where the faults in adaptation are radiantly obvious. In Good Omens I subconsciously started searching for the tiniest little things that didn’t align with my imagination/visualisations when I read the book.
Is this a bad thing of me to do? No, of course not! I’m human! And like any human I –both- want the world around me just the way I like it, and not (be surprised or, at least, open to other views).
This is something I just have to know this about myself. I have to be wary that I don’t dismiss something if it doesn’t line up with my expectations.
Luckily –to end this rather negative sounding paragraph-, Good Omens is just the way I like it. The nitpicking, even at my worst, is kept to a minimum. But, that also means that someone, somewhere who, like me, read the book five times is going to loath it with a vengeance.
The reason I started with this above –bleak- paragraph about adaptations was because when the news broke that –after years of development hell- Good Omens was finally green lit, people online were rather ‘ticked off’ by the casting of Jack Whitehall as Newton Pulsifer.
And I never quite understood why. True, I only know the man from QI, but in the confines of that show I always liked him. I think he’s a loveable chap in real life. But even if I didn’t that shouldn’t bother me when I see an actor act.
I, personally, liked Whitehall’s performance of Newt. He is exactly as I imagined him.
Still, this is 21st century for you. People online will discuss and condemn a pop-culture object long before a single scene is shot.
The rest of the cast, however, were more kindly judged by the online crowd and rightfully so. The respect and the love for this silly tale about the end of days is obvious from the getgo. And each and every actor in it is committed to bringing their A-game.
Some actors are a bit underused in this adaptation of the story but that doesn’t matter much. Their skill isn’t in question, rather their screentime.
The main stage is set for Michael Sheen and David Tennant as angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley respectively.
When I saw the first promo pic of Michael Sheen with his white hair I was a bit bothered (again my, above, statement about my mental visualisation differing from what I see on the screen). But the minute the actor opened his mouth and started acting he took me ‘under his wing’ and now I can’t imagine anyone else but Sheen in the part.
The same goes for Tennant’s Crowley who is having a blast as the bad guy. Like black and white he and Sheen fit together like ying and yang – the chemistry between the actors is amazing.
The slash/shipping potential is still very much there just as much as those tumblr fan fiction makers found it in the book.
Truth be told, it’d be hard to erase it out. But, Good Omens –the six episode TV special- is actually having a blast with it.
But where Sheen and Tennant took me in hook-line-and-sinker other characters didn’t quite work for me. McKeen’s Shadwell is a bit ‘too nice’ for me. And Miranda Richardson’s Madame Tracy a bit too ‘young-looking’.
Still, as I said, each actor brings his or her A-game! So any fault would be up to the director, cinematographer or editor.
Fun versus Fear: comedy.
Good Omens is hilarious all the way through. One particular trope of humour I found is both Heaven and Hell’s disdain for ‘keeping up with the times’. Whether it is Hastor –demon of Hell- asking quizzically what a ‘computer’ is or John Hamm’s hilarious archangel Gabriel proclaiming to all prospective buyers in a bookshop that he is buying pornography (because that is what humans do). It’s the dark edge comedy that gets me over the farce-comedy every time.
But, you can’t have a comedy with a heart if you only highlight the comedic side of the medallion. Every single one of the best remembered comedies have, at one point, shifted direction to a darker path. Just think about it: There’s something about Mary (1998) has a true heartbreaking scene near the end. Clue (1985) actually had murders going around. Three fugitives (1989) makes the main ‘loser’ character truly dangerous at one point. And then there are those horror parodies (which Good Omens is) like The Cornetto-trilogy, Ghostbusters (1984) and even Strange Brew (1983) which are, at deliberate moments, truly scary.
You can’t make a story all out lovely. You can’t have the heroes go through the whole ordeal unscratched. That doesn’t even work for the tamest episode of ‘Winnie the Pooh’. Just remember that cake-throwing scene in the Great Race (1965); at one point you want Tony Curtis to get a pie in the face.
So when, in the second episode, Aziraphale calls ‘the right number’ the tone is deliberately shifted to the suspenseful trope of ‘the hero finding out who the killer was all along’ (in common tongue: the revelation-scene).
And that’s only the first of many ‘scary’ scenes that the show starts to build after that. There’s a reason why both Pratchett and Gaiman preffer(ed) to dress in black. The dark side has the better stories to tell and light only works when there is some shadow present.
Amazon’s Good Omens proclaims itself to be the first real adaptation of Pratchett and Gaiman’s book but that isn’t really true. It is the first ‘visual’ adaptation, that’s for sure, but it just wouldn’t do to neglect the BBC radio adaptation that came out in 2014 (also consisting of 6 episodes).
I actually wrote a (somewhat) review about it here .
Comparing the two is sheer impossible because both bring things to the table that is unique to their medium. The television-mini-series, for instance, is allowed to put in various visual gags. The radio-play, then, can trust on people’s imagination to ‘fill in the blanks’.
But there is one thing in which the two version can, in fact, be compared, which is: script.
I argue that the BBC radio play is a bit more solid in its outing than the televised version. Because the constraints of the medium relies heavily (almost solely sometimes) on voice acting it needs some gravitas in the spoken words. Adam Young’s speech about ‘his coming friends’, for instance, is a lot more scary in the radio play than it is in the mini-series. But, then again, ‘new Adam’ has glowing red eyes to even things out.
I truly missed the ‘other’ horsemen.
Especially the horseman of ‘things-stuck-in-a-drawer-until-you-give-it-a-good-thumping’.
When I read that Johnny Vegas was going to be in this episode in the opening credits
I truly imagined him as one of the ‘other’ bikers; and I still do.
Where the radio play was pretty straightforward from start to finish the television-series doesn’t have this definitive feel. Moreover, scenes are added that (to be honest) could’ve been cut. It brings solace to the tale of Aziraphale and Crowley, that’s for sure, but it also makes the last episode drag on a bit.
This is interesting because the television series was written by one of the original authors: Neil Gaiman.
Knowing the other author’s –Pratchett’s- disdain for writing ‘happy go lucky’-endings , it feels like the television show in Gaiman’s hands became a bit more Gaiman than Pratchett in the last two episodes. Is this bad? No, of course not. The love of the material is apparent. But it does, unfortunately, make the BBC radio play the better adaptation on a script level simply because it was written by an ‘outsider’.
The CGI takes a bit of getting used to. There is a strange Computer Graphics Imagery-war going on in the world in which Disney is currently the undisputed (Lion) king. And Disney isn’t entirely silly: they want to keep this position, so they’re not sharing.
Good Omens, doesn’t have the technology and budget to pull off the level Disney (and thus: Marvel, Pixar and the like) can. So, it doesn’t try!
This, however, results in some ‘Doctor Who’ level of CGI that takes the viewer ‘a bit’ out of the flow of the show. It’s not like the moviemakers spring the computer animation on the viewer front and centre all the time; it knows the graphics aren’t perfect. Instead, Good Omens, banks on the audience’s understanding that it’s not the skill of the computer department involved that matters but rather the heart and story behind it all.
That’s why the show opts for nice little pop-up signs straight from Horrible Histories. Good Omens can’t be perfect so it doesn’t try.
I don’t really agree though. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I am longing for perfection. Disney-like animation WITH this brilliant script and acting. If only as a reassurance that we might get a mindboggling visually stunning ‘Discworld’ or ‘Anansi Boys’ movie in the future.
Just how cool would that scene between (Fat) Charlie and the Dragon be! With Lenny Henry narrating, obviously.
Continuing on this strain of thought: When it comes to God and the Devil, I guess I would’ve preferred the actors providing the voice to come by as themselves instead of some CGI tomfoolery.
Especially since Good Omens is filled to the brim with fun cameos.
Visually by camera, then; the camera of Good Omens hardly stands still. The mini-series knows when to do a ‘hero-shot’ whilst, at the same time doesn’t shy away from some ‘messy’ hand-held work. It’s not always the right choice at the right time but it gets the job done. At the very least the viewer always sees what’s going on.
The big critique about Game of Thrones S08E03.
Montage-wise there aren’t any big faults either although I would argue that the final episode could’ve been cut-up better. But, that’s me: nitpicking –as I’ve been doing throughout this review.
Good versus Evil: conclusion.
Good Omens is a tad too meandering for ‘people who haven’t read the book’. Heck, I’ve read the book and even I found it a bit to meandering. Still, what’s not to enjoy about a passion project in which each and every person making it was devoted to bring the best possible adaptation of the tale to the screen. Good Omens really is quite good.
As the final words on the screen state: for Terry (which brought a tear to my eyes, it truly did). I think this is something the ol’ bastard would’ve enjoyed very much –and me with him.
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