GOOD OMENS

It’s taken three decades but Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s epic sci-fi saga is finally here

the first draft of good omens took nine weeks to write and nine months to polish, and it’s taken 29 years to arrive on screen. After delays ranging from the banal to the catastrophic, a six-part adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s comic apocalypse novel is soon to arrive on TV, with an extraordinary cast led by David Tennant and Michael Sheen in the roles of demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale respectively. The former is an incarnation of the snake who tried to lure Eve with an apple, while the latter has been hanging out at the gates of Heaven. They’ve both been based on Earth since its creation, and now they’re tasked with stopping the end of the world. Joining them in the mouth-watering cast are Reece Shearsmith as William Shakespeare, Jon Hamm as Archangel Gabriel, and actual Frances Mcdormand as the Voice of God.

As for why it’s taken so long for this story to arrive on screen, the banal reasons range from busy schedules to financing issues, while on the catastrophic side, there was a part-funded Good Omens feature script from Terry Gilliam that had Johnny Depp and Robin Williams potentially signed on to star, but got nowhere. Gilliam was pitching a “hilarious movie about the antichrist and the end of the world, Neil Gaiman explains, “three or four months after September 11”. Hollywood didn’t want a thing to do with it.

Gilliam persevered, fruitlessly. In 2011, a TV version was planned, co-written by a different Python, Terry Jones. That too, stalled. Then in March 2015, Sir Terry Pratchett passed away. Pratchett and Gaiman had a deal that they would only work on Good Omens together, but in a posthumous letter, Sir Terry gave his blessing for Gaiman to proceed.

The result will be on screens early next year, directed by Doctor Who and Sherlock’s Douglas Mackinnon. Have a nice doomsday.