Hello my Beautiful Watchers, my name is Dominic Noble, and as I hope some of you are already
aware, Sir Terry Pratchett is my all time favorite author.
His untimely death in 2015 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease was a cosmically
unfair tragedy that I’m am still not fully over mourning and as a result I’ve been
avoid making any videos discussing my love for his books and or my…. opinions of the
adaptations of his work.
But seeing as the Amazon Prime adaptation of Good Omens is nigh, and this book was co-written
by Neil Gaiman who is still alive and still awesome this seems like an appropriate time
to make an exception.
Before anyone rushes to the comments section to ask, yes there will eventually be a full
Lost in Adaptation episode for the show, as it has been paid for by a patron already,
however don’t expect it anytime soon because it's quite far down the list and I need to
give it a bit of time for the Youtube copyright bots to calm down before I can cover it anyway.
This is primarily a review of the book and my predictions for the upcoming show based
on the trailers and my past experiences seeing adaptation trends so I’m afraid you’ll
have to wait for stuff like the history that up lead to this TV adaptation and or the other
adaptations that were made or failed to get made before it.
Because I desperately want anyone who’s not read this book to read this book, I’m
not going to give a full breakdown of the plot, just a general description of the set
up and I’m going to keep the really spoiler heavy stuff for right at the end of the video.
However I can’t guarantee that I won’t let something a little spoilery slip here
and there so if you want to experience the book or the TV show completely devoid of expectations
this might not be the video for you.
Ok so a fairly vague description of this book is as follows: It turns out the Christian
faith is actually 100% real and correct including Satan the angel’s failed attempt to take
over heaven, the garden of Eden, the unfortunate incident involving a forbidden fruit there
and the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Now I’m not a religious person myself so I don’t know how much of that is actually
in the Bible and how much is just pop culture but I would like to think that not too many
people are going to get hung up on theological accuracy in a humorous book.
In what appears to be the 1990s, an angel by the name of Aziraphale and a fallen angel
turned demon by the name of Crowley are both living on Earth pretending to be adversaries
while actually being quite good friends who occasionally like to have a drink together.
Crowley is unexpectedly informed by his superiors that hell is ready to start the apocalypse
and is given the task of delivering the newly born Antichrist to a hospital and help sneak
him into the care of some human parents.
However it transpires that Crowley has become rather fond of the Earth and doesn't want
it destroyed just yet, so feeds this information to Aziraphale in the hopes that he can arrange
for some super good people to surround the Antichrist as he grows up and counter the
evil influences he would receive from the agents of Hell.
His logic being that as Satan was technically created an angel, evil as a genetic trait
wouldn’t necessarily be passed onto his child so his personality and inclination to
kick start world ending supernatural wars would be a battle of nurture not nature.
However unbeknownst to anyone involved including Heaven, Hell and the secret alliance on Earth,
there was an unbelievable cock up brought about by an incompetent group of satanic nuns
that resulted in the wrong child being switched in the hospital.
As a result a perfectly normal human child ended up being tempted by good and evil for
11 years while the actual Antichrist was raised by normal human parents in a small town in
the south of England.
When they finally figure this out Aziraphale and Crowley have to try to track down the
boy, who is ironically called Adam, before the world finds out what can happen when a
normal 11 year old child finds out he has the power to shape reality to his will and
the forces of Heaven and Hell start their final confrontation.
So the first thing I have to say in regards to review is this book is so funny you guys,
it’s so so funny. Individually these authors are hilarious together it is pure genius and
I love it. I remember the very first time I picked up this book, I laughed out in a
quiet bookstore, at the first page and I wasn't even embarrassed about that.
It’s the kind of book that I could spend the next year quoting continuously and it
would be time well spent. If you guy haven't experienced the works of these men you are
missing out.
Now admittedly the humour is very British, there's a lot of dry wit and sarcasm but I
mean I don’t think that would be a problem for any of my Beautiful Watchers as you’re
clearly very into well made British things.
A subplot of this book is the summoning of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and exactly
what they’ve been getting up to for the past few thousand years waiting for the end
times.
Now they’re all interesting characters but being a huge Terry Pratchett fan I was obviously
most excited to see Death and see if he’s anything like the Death of the Discworld novels.
The answer is… Kinda? Enough that he was a surprisingly funny character but he’s
not quite as strangely lovable as the one I’m used to.
There's a scene near the end where some cold calling phone sales people are on the receiving
end of a recently thwarted demon duke of hell’s wrath and it's a lot darker than anything
that came before it in my opinion, I’m mean, I’m assuming that bit was written by Gaiman
as he’s the horror guy but still I was like… Damn... Someone REALLY hates salespeople and
I mean it's not even the only jab they take at them.
I wouldn’t say this book goes out of its way to celebrate OR mock the Christian faith
but it does treat it as a work of fiction to be freely reinterpreted by an author just
like any other mythology so I suppose the more uptight of the religiously oriented might
take offense to it but to be completely honest I’ve never been of the opinion that such
people deserve to be listened to in any capacity, so.
Now as much as I loved this book, and as especially much as it pains me to do anything that's
akin to speaking ill of these two authors I am obliged as a critic to point out the
occasional flaws that I perceived in this book of theirs.
First of all, in my opinion you can very much tell that this was a collaborative effort
between two authors who had other stuff going on.
It's not as concise or well structured as either of their solo works. Not to the point
of being a problem, but it is something you’ll notice if you’ve a fan of one or both of
them.
One of the many things this book is is a spoof of The Omen, a horror film from the 70s about
a young boy by the name of Damien who is also secretly the son of Satan.
And not just in regards to that parentage and the title but also in the switching of
babies by a satanic religious order at the start, one of which is the son of an American
diplomat.
I mention this because if you, like me read this book for the first time without having
seen The Omen some things might confuse you.
For example the arrival of a hellhound to be the Antichrist’s friend and protector
bothered me a bit because it had a lot of build up but didn't ultimately contribute
anything to the plot.
It turns out that entire joke was based on subverting expectations that you wouldn't
necessarily have had if you haven't seen The Omen. You see, in that the hellhound does
bad stuff for Damien but the Antichrist in this, Adam, is nice so the dog ends up becoming
nice too and doing very little.
Another problem is there are some jokes that are inescapably in somewhat poor taste. If
you’ve read it you probably know what I’m talking about here.
I know this might seem like a double standard because I usually decry this sort of thing
outright but I would be willing to bet my life that these things were not intended to
be mean spirited. Fat shaming and low key homophobia was just kind of everywhere in
the late 80s and early 90s, people were kind of conditioned into doing it automatically.
Ok shall we talk about that upcoming Amazon prime series that we are but a few weeks away
from now.
If you haven't seen the trailers yet there's the thing. I would show them to you myself
but they use pop songs to admittedly quite good effect and copyright being the harsh
mistress that it is I think it's probably best if I just strike a dramatic pose and
wait for you to come back.
Alrighty.
Ok so first of all I want to establish that I am super excited about this TV series and
happy with the way it looks. However… You guys know me if there's anything that looks
even remotely off book my brain’s going to zero in on it. That said, let's talk about
the positive stuff first.
I can’t go into too much detail in the non spoiler section but I’m seeing a LOT of
book accurate stuff in these trailers. An exciting amount, you know what I mean?
The casting for this has made me very very happy. I mean, Tennant and Sheen look perfect
for these roles. Unless their performances are like vastly worse than the trailer footage
I think I’m going to be very pleased.
This isn’t so much a prediction as just a thought but apparently one thing that Pratchett
and Gaiman wanted to be very very clear about is that Aziraphale is super SUPER coded gay.
I believe their exact words were “gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide”…
I’m not entirely sure about that metaphor but they make it clear that they do mean gay
as in the sexual orientation because they go on to point out that angels are for the
most part sexless so it is just an impression he gives off.
I’m curious to see if they keep this in the TV show or if they just stick with the
British dandy gent thing they seem to be leaning into in the trailer.
Ok moving onto the stuff that made me a tad nervous and I do want to stress that I could
be completely wrong about any or all of these things as it is just at trailer and I would
be more than delighted to be proved wrong here.
The first issue I have is that they seem to be implying that the relationship between
Aziraphale and Crowley is kind of strained at the start of the story.
Once friends turned enemies having to team up for the greater good is a tried and tested
story format, but I don’t think it's what Az and Crowley were about in Good Omens and
I think it kind of misses the point.
The entire concept of these two is that they’ve always gotten along and been friends despite
being the very embodiments of good and evil. That's the joke. That’s where the humor
of their relationship comes from, it's fucking weird that an angel and a demon have such
good chemistry.
If you show that they are not good friends because it would be weird for an angel and
a demon to be BFFs then…. There is no joke. That just… Makes sense.
I know, I know, screenplay by Neil Gaiman, but no one ever has absolute power if it’s
being financed by someone else. There’s always exterior forces that they have to deal
with.
Ok my spoiler light predictions are as follows:
One of the structure issues I alluded to earlier in regards to the book is some key players
are introduced surprisingly late in the story and I do think their development suffers as
a result.
There's also very rare instances of what could be considered a semi-dropped plot thread.
My prediction is the show will correct for these things, introducing these characters
much earlier in the story and concluding things a little more cohesively.
I don't think they’re going to set the TV show in the 90s. It's always easier to bump
things up to whatever is contemporary times so you don't have to think about the make
of every single car that drives around in the background and when it’s a mere 30 years
between them and there's nothing decade specific in the book it’s not that hard to do.
I wasn’t entirely sure who this guy was at first, but then a targeted ad on Facebook
was kind enough to inform that he is in fact, the archangel Gabriel. So apparently he’s
been added to the story, I predict as a replacement for the lesser known Metatron.
Tell a person you’re the Metatron and they stare at you blankly. Mention something out
of a Charleton Heston movie and suddenly everybody’s a theologist scholar.
And Benedict Cumberbatch is apparently going to be the voice of Satan according to IMDB
so I suspect that will be interesting. Sorry there's only much I can predict without going
into spoilers.
Soooo I guess we better move on to that. Serious spoiler stuff starts now I guess, here is
the time code to skip past it if you so desire.
Alright, what do fans of the book have to look forward to?
Well to start with, it does appear that we’re going to get the opening conversation that
takes place on the walls of the garden of Eden.
We also have Crowley's vintage Bentley, a hellhound that evidently becomes a small good
boy, the Them, the four horsemen of the apocalypse on their motorbikes and they do appear to
have remembered War’s surprising gender.
We appear to also have confirmation of Newt, Anathema, Shadwell and Madame Tracey, the
UFO, the rain of fish with its happy octopus, Aziraphale walking into the a light and losing
his corporeal body, Crowley coming out of Aziraphale’s burning bookstore before taking
his Bentley on its destructive final fiery journey.
I’m also seeing a lot of nuns, that one can only assume are super chatty.
I’m not going to lie, it looks really really good from an adaptation perspective… Slightly
less good from a convincing CGI perspective but you can’t have everything.
I’m really not sure what to make of that scene where Aziraphale and Crowley meet on
a battlefield. I mean it COULD be when they were on different sides of Satan’s rebellion
but I have to say that is a tad underwhelming if that's their representation of the great
battle between God and Satan.
Alternatively I guess this could be some event from Earth history that they were both involved
in, maybe the reason that they don’t appear to be friends anymore in the show.
I couldn’t help but notice that Aziraphale, Crowley and Adam appear to be in a desert
as they prepare for their last stand. I don’t remember that in the book, I’m pretty sure
that happens on a US air base.
It looks like Pollution is a woman now which is… whatever there's nothing intrinsically
masculine about his role in the book.
They might have gender swapped him because they’ve given Aziraphale a white themed
look to counter Crowley’s black aesthetic and they didn’t want the two characters
to look too similar.
It looks like they're going to expand on some things that happened off page in the book
like what Adam and Eve end up using Aziraphale’s flaming sword for after he gives it to them
and the fire that burned down the Chattering order’s hospital.
I am so fucking excited to see the armies of Heaven and Hell squaring off at the end.
I desperately hope that's why some of the other effects look a little dodgy, because
they used their entire budget on that bit…. Just let me hope ok I’m going to be so disappointed
if they skimp on that.
My spoiler heavy predictions for show are as follows:
I suspect that the thing about all of Crowley’s music inevitably transforming into Queen songs
is going to have be quietly ignored. I mean, I know they used Under Pressure in one of
the trailers but they’d have to pay for the licensing for pretty much the complete
works to keep up with all the references to it that were in the book and I don’t think
anyone's going to willingly spend that much moolah if they can avoid it.
Funny story actually, the audiobook for Good Omens actually has to state the record label
copyright holder information for Queen at the start, I think because Freddie Mercury
lyrics are written out word for word at several points in the story.
I don’t think that they’re gonna keep the bit where Crowley magically replaces all
of the middle management businessmen's paintball guns with real machine guns. That joke was
written by two Englishmen 30 years ago and I think that Amazon is smart enough to know
that it hasn’t aged well.
I hope that they establish that Crowley can travel down phone lines before he uses that
power to escape the duke of hell near the end. I know his demon powers provide a certain
natural deus ex machina plot device but it would be better if that didn’t come completely
out of left field in the show like I kinda feel it did in the book.
The book ends on not one but two anti climaxes. Once when the war between the forces of Heaven
and Hell doesn't happen and then again when Adam stops Satan from rising so Aziraphale
and Crowley don't have to fight him.
I predict that one or both of these events will get a little further along than they
do in the book, either the massive squadrons of angels with start to clash before Adam
deals with the horsemen or Satan will take a few swings at our boys before his son sends
him back to Hell.
I’m not 100% on that though, and I know you see a big red dude climbing out of the
ground in the trailer. That could well be Beelzebub so I wouldn’t say Satan on Earth
is guaranteed.
Ok final thoughts and stuff.
So just as I started work on this video this mother loving article slides into my Twitter
feed and I learn that the only real reason that Neil Gaiman pushed so hard for this show
to be made and was so involved in it was because Terry Pratchett wrote him a letter asking
him to just before he died.
I don’t see why he would make this up considering that saying “I never really wanted to do
this” isn’t exactly good press for the TV show so I am faced with the inescapable
conclusion that this TV show really is a labour of love that an author I enjoy made to honor
the memory and last request of an author who changed my life with his writing so if anyone
needs me I will be in the corner crying over my copy of this book and waiting for the 31st
of this month to roll around.
Umm.. Like share, comment, subscribe, the algorithm is bad, I’ll see you guys soon.
Hello again my Beautiful Watchers. I just wanted to take this opportunity to give you
a quick reminder that there’s a wonderful website called Patreon that’s been allowing
online producers to actually make a living doing what they do, since apparently YouTube’s
decided that they shouldn't anymore. Basically, they offer the chance to pledge a certain
amount of money per month or per video in exchange for various rewards offered by the
creator. There’s a variety of stuff you can earn by becoming one of my patrons, including
early access to all videos and taking part in that survey you see at the start of every
Lost in Adaptation episode. That’s actually a very important part of the process, as I
use it to gauge how much I’m going to need to explain about the book and the film before
I start comparing them. If you decide to become a higher level contributor your name will
be added to the credits that you’re seeing right now and you’ll be given the option
to join my private chat room so you can regularly talk with me and other patrons. If you’re
keen enough to join the topmost tier of patronage, you’ll earn the most coveted of all the
rewards: the chance to pick a future adaptation to be reviewed by yours truly. However, if
right now you are thinking, my goodness The Dom, I can’t do that, I mean, I was going
to, I found a magic lamp that granted me three wishes and I meant to wish for infinite wealth,
but umm...Well, long story short, I have three jetpacks now. Fear not, it would still be
a huge help to me if you were to give that like button the old clickeroo, share this
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next episode.
Opinions on the adaptations of his work.
Do you mind, Sir Terry?
Actually, come on in, buddy. The irony of this is not lost on me, with the cat that
I named Sir Terry Pratchett is interrupting me while I’m trying to record a video about
a Terry Pratchett book. Say hi buddy, say hi Sir Terry Pratchett.