Good Omens
So then..."Good Omens".
Now, I have to admit to having to overcome a lot of prejudice in order to watch this. Prejudice is a limiting, strait-jacketed thing. I've grown bored in my old age of not experiencing things simply because they are not "cool". Who are the shadowy arbiters of cool? I refuse to recognise their authority: I am not at home to influencers and, if I am, they better be pretty damn subtle about it. Give it a bit of mis-direction, at least. These days you are led by the nose through the entire trick and the flourish is a bill for services rendered.
So generally I'm against prejudice but I would be lying if I said I didn't have issues both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. You can't say anything about Terry Pratchett since he died. You could say very little about him when he was alive but he was never for me. The beard, the hat, the scarf. Those books with the awful covers, the Douglas-Adam's-lite-shtick. No thank you. I know people love him but I'm sorry: I flicked through a couple of those books and got numbingly bored very quickly. I'm sure he's great. He haunts us to this day as wise sounding memes on social media and that's what he would have wanted.
Neil Gaiman too...ugh. Where to begin? The fact that he is a sort of sappy Jesus to Alan Moore's Old Testament God? That horrible, slow, lisping poetry voice that he delivers speeches in? The fact that he's still pretty good looking in his fifties and can wear a three quarter length leather jacket and it still looks okay? Yeah, this one is pretty much just jealousy. Unlike Pratchett I have read some of his books and they were alright. Not great, not earth-shattering, not spell-binding and life changing. But pretty good if you like that sort of thing and clearly people do. If his incredible success remains baffling to me I can only put it down to an elusive x-factor that I've missed, either through ignorance or wilfulness. I will concede that possibility.
So, "Good Omens" then. The TV show. On Amazon Prime, or what have you.
It's alright. It feels weirdly static. Its built around ideas of heaven and hell, of thousands of years of history and the action tends to boil down to cosy natters against cosmic backdrops. Which is I suppose the point. This isn't the story of war in heaven and Armageddon falling upon the craven nations of the earth, it's the story of a metaphysical gay couple bickering through eternity. That is both its secret joy and its weakness. Michael Sheen's timorous gastronome angel, Aziraphale has known David Tennant's swaggering Crowley since they both had a gig in the Garden of Eden: Crowley was the tempting serpent, Aziraphale the angel guarding the gate with a flaming sword. Both are immediately tripped up by the subjective nature of morality: when Crowley advises Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of Knowledge he has given them knowledge, something God had denied them. Surely a good thing. When A and E are banished from the garden Aziraphale gives them his flaming sword. Surely that was also a good thing to do, though it went against God's wishes. From the start it appears they are doing each others jobs. Somewhere down the line they develop a pact: they like it on earth but humans seem to be perfectly happy doing good and evil by themselves, it doesn't take both of them. They do each other favours, they take turns, they half their work-load, and as they do their relationship deepens and becomes more complicated. Hence the bickering, the stropping off, the meaningful glances about unspoken things. These may be metaphysical beings but they're also men. Important stuff is rarely said.
Tennant and Sheen are both pretty great - Tennant assaying a Bill Nighy impression throughout, swaggering around in leather and lizard's eyes, possibly thinner still than in his tenure as Doctor Who. (This is a Doctor Who saturated show, by the way. As well as Tennant, the director and producer is Douglas Mackinnon who also worked on that show. Mark Gatiss shows up in the cast (of course) and it was written by Gaiman who wrote the much admired "The Doctor's Wife" and the rather less admired "Nightmare in Silver")
Sheen as the prissy and ovine angel is also great in a smaller, tidier role. His buttons remain buttoned up throughout, even as he gorges himself on the finest delicacies history has to offer. They are the original odd-couple which, given their provenance, isn't really that original.
The problem with the show is everything else. Or rather they ARE the show. When the camera is not on them you don't care. There's a mix up with a baby in an "homage" to The Omen, there is the last Witchfinder and his apprentice (Christ, its Jack Whitehall), there's a kids gang in some woods, the gathering of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a pretty witch from America, shots of heaven looking like a recently touched up multi-story. There's all this STUFF and you don't care. You want to get back to the only two well rounded interesting characters in the piece, which is great news for Tennant and Sheen but not much cop for the show as a whole.
Also, it could do with a trim. There are long long scenes of dialogue - and this is me talking, I'm a fan of long, long scenes of dialogue - that go nowhere. Its windy, its vast, its also oddly small and conversational. Its a mystery. Its brightly coloured, its good natured, its whimsical, its not trying to be gritty and urban and real - all the things I'm bored up to the arse with. I should like it but its not quite there.
It may be my problem. Maybe I'm not over my vile prejudice. But I think not. I think Gaiman's trying to juggle the macro with the micro, but is very much more taken with the latter. This is a love story for doomsday, where you're so busy rooting for the morningstar crossed lovers that you miss the end of the world.
 |
| Bench Warmers of the Apocalypse |
Now, I have to admit to having to overcome a lot of prejudice in order to watch this. Prejudice is a limiting, strait-jacketed thing. I've grown bored in my old age of not experiencing things simply because they are not "cool". Who are the shadowy arbiters of cool? I refuse to recognise their authority: I am not at home to influencers and, if I am, they better be pretty damn subtle about it. Give it a bit of mis-direction, at least. These days you are led by the nose through the entire trick and the flourish is a bill for services rendered.
So generally I'm against prejudice but I would be lying if I said I didn't have issues both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. You can't say anything about Terry Pratchett since he died. You could say very little about him when he was alive but he was never for me. The beard, the hat, the scarf. Those books with the awful covers, the Douglas-Adam's-lite-shtick. No thank you. I know people love him but I'm sorry: I flicked through a couple of those books and got numbingly bored very quickly. I'm sure he's great. He haunts us to this day as wise sounding memes on social media and that's what he would have wanted.
Neil Gaiman too...ugh. Where to begin? The fact that he is a sort of sappy Jesus to Alan Moore's Old Testament God? That horrible, slow, lisping poetry voice that he delivers speeches in? The fact that he's still pretty good looking in his fifties and can wear a three quarter length leather jacket and it still looks okay? Yeah, this one is pretty much just jealousy. Unlike Pratchett I have read some of his books and they were alright. Not great, not earth-shattering, not spell-binding and life changing. But pretty good if you like that sort of thing and clearly people do. If his incredible success remains baffling to me I can only put it down to an elusive x-factor that I've missed, either through ignorance or wilfulness. I will concede that possibility.
So, "Good Omens" then. The TV show. On Amazon Prime, or what have you.
It's alright. It feels weirdly static. Its built around ideas of heaven and hell, of thousands of years of history and the action tends to boil down to cosy natters against cosmic backdrops. Which is I suppose the point. This isn't the story of war in heaven and Armageddon falling upon the craven nations of the earth, it's the story of a metaphysical gay couple bickering through eternity. That is both its secret joy and its weakness. Michael Sheen's timorous gastronome angel, Aziraphale has known David Tennant's swaggering Crowley since they both had a gig in the Garden of Eden: Crowley was the tempting serpent, Aziraphale the angel guarding the gate with a flaming sword. Both are immediately tripped up by the subjective nature of morality: when Crowley advises Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of Knowledge he has given them knowledge, something God had denied them. Surely a good thing. When A and E are banished from the garden Aziraphale gives them his flaming sword. Surely that was also a good thing to do, though it went against God's wishes. From the start it appears they are doing each others jobs. Somewhere down the line they develop a pact: they like it on earth but humans seem to be perfectly happy doing good and evil by themselves, it doesn't take both of them. They do each other favours, they take turns, they half their work-load, and as they do their relationship deepens and becomes more complicated. Hence the bickering, the stropping off, the meaningful glances about unspoken things. These may be metaphysical beings but they're also men. Important stuff is rarely said.
Tennant and Sheen are both pretty great - Tennant assaying a Bill Nighy impression throughout, swaggering around in leather and lizard's eyes, possibly thinner still than in his tenure as Doctor Who. (This is a Doctor Who saturated show, by the way. As well as Tennant, the director and producer is Douglas Mackinnon who also worked on that show. Mark Gatiss shows up in the cast (of course) and it was written by Gaiman who wrote the much admired "The Doctor's Wife" and the rather less admired "Nightmare in Silver")
Sheen as the prissy and ovine angel is also great in a smaller, tidier role. His buttons remain buttoned up throughout, even as he gorges himself on the finest delicacies history has to offer. They are the original odd-couple which, given their provenance, isn't really that original.
The problem with the show is everything else. Or rather they ARE the show. When the camera is not on them you don't care. There's a mix up with a baby in an "homage" to The Omen, there is the last Witchfinder and his apprentice (Christ, its Jack Whitehall), there's a kids gang in some woods, the gathering of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a pretty witch from America, shots of heaven looking like a recently touched up multi-story. There's all this STUFF and you don't care. You want to get back to the only two well rounded interesting characters in the piece, which is great news for Tennant and Sheen but not much cop for the show as a whole.
Also, it could do with a trim. There are long long scenes of dialogue - and this is me talking, I'm a fan of long, long scenes of dialogue - that go nowhere. Its windy, its vast, its also oddly small and conversational. Its a mystery. Its brightly coloured, its good natured, its whimsical, its not trying to be gritty and urban and real - all the things I'm bored up to the arse with. I should like it but its not quite there.
It may be my problem. Maybe I'm not over my vile prejudice. But I think not. I think Gaiman's trying to juggle the macro with the micro, but is very much more taken with the latter. This is a love story for doomsday, where you're so busy rooting for the morningstar crossed lovers that you miss the end of the world.
Comments
Post a Comment