A fantasy show that’s heavenly, but why the devilishly long wait?
Back in the bad old days, when there were just four channels and the set in the corner was probably a Rediffusion rental, we waited years for cinema movies to air on telly.
These days, films appear on movie channels or video-on-demand sites within weeks of release. But it can take months for actual TV serials to reach our televisions. Work that one out.
Good Omens (BBc2), the riotous fantasy about an angel and a demon who are secretly best mates, was a joint venture for the BBc and amazon. It’s been available on the internet giant’s Prime Video site for ages, since last May, when all six episodes became instantly available to online subscribers. I admit I gobbled the lot back then.
If you don’t have a Prime Video subscription, Good Omens has been out on DVD since October. What a christmas present for fans of David Tennant, as the cowardly devil with a rock star’s swagger, or Michael Sheen, camping it up as the angelic cherub.
Yet only now is it available on terrestrial TV. Good Omens is billed as a co-production, but making us mere mortals (paying our £154.50 annual licence fee) wait nine months can be called fair only if amazon stumped up all the budget and auntie provided the sandwiches.
There’s no denying it’s a stupendous show. The cast is colossal, bursting with a-listers: Benedict cumberbatch as Satan, Derek Jacobi as God’s spokesperson, Jon Hamm as the arrogant angel Gabriel, Brian cox as the voice of Death . . . not to mention anna Maxwell Martin (Beelzebub), Frances McDormand (the voice of God) and Nicholas Parsons (don’t ask).
Just about every other actor, apart from the children, is a wellknown face. Even if you don’t enjoy comic fantasy, it’s fun to watch and shout out names as you spot the stars. Daniel Mays! Miranda Richardson! all three of the League of Gentlemen (two of them playing Nazis). Johnny Vegas! Nina Sosanya! Doon Mackichan!
The story is based on a novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, so it’s bursting with daft jokes. Silliest of the lot is the convent for devil-worshipping nuns, the Sisters of the chattering Order of St Beryl.
They double as the local maternity hospital, the perfect place to bring the antichrist into the world. It’s as if Dennis Wheatley wrote call The Midwife. Unless crowley the demon and his effete friend aziraphale the angel can do something about it, this heralds the destruction of all civilisation. ‘Times are changing,’ sniffs one of hell’s minions. ‘They’re coming to an end, for a start.’
The end will be a long time coming on White House Farm (ITV), a true crime drama about the Bamber/caffell murders as heavy and atmospheric as this year’s non-stop rain.
Scenes are linked with lingering, silent shots of the Essex landscape, and once the characters begin a conversation they seem trapped in it, as though they want to escape but can’t.
That ten-minute stretch in the morgue was hard to watch. The scene at the end, with a reluctant vet putting down a dog, was harder still. To those like me who remember the case well, it’s mesmerising. If you don’t know how the story ends, though, it must be frustratingly slow.
Mark addy, as the stubborn sergeant who can’t believe young mother Sheila killed her parents and children before commiting suicide, is always at his best in roles that defy authority, and he’s excellent here.
Stephen Graham is his boss, DcI ‘Taff’ Jones, with an accent that comes, at different moments, from every part of Wales, anglesey to Newport.
He’d have done better to stick to his native Liverpudlian: no one would have cared.