The Death That Never Was
Good Omens 2 and the future business of art for art’s sake
15 years have gone by and still nothing. its March 2023 and I’m reminded by a instagram reel that Neil Gaiman is busily created Good Omens 2. It will continue to star two eminant actors of this generation, the Welsh and Scottish heroes Michal Sheen and David Tennant. This is the story I have been waiting for since the day I read the Good Omens novel aged 15 (I am now 30). As a fan of the novel, the first television series could only act as a proof of concept. Could Neil Gaiman produce a show which matched the magnificance of the novel? From this viewer came the answer. A emphatic Yes! But the second story is one I thought was never coming. It is built on a late night discussion between Gaiman and co-author Terry Pratchett whcih never came to anything while Pratchett was alive. Is it madness for Gaiman to produce this story without Prattchet? My thought was, possibly.
This is not just a adaptation but a new story, and he must not live up to words written on a page, but to the legacy of a man Gaiman has compared to Michelangelo of Sistine Chapel fame. For me, this story matters. They are both writers in my top 5 favourite authors of all time. their positions in my pantheon is indesputable. Thus, there was always more rding on this second series than th first because this is an example of what the future looks like when it reaches into the past.
When Terry Pratchett died there were two important parts of his will which were made public. The first was that Neil Gaiman would be given his writers hat. Terry’s position in the television series is cemented by the hat’s continuous presence in Aziraphale’s bookshop, a haven of all things good and holy on a London high street. It also seems fitting that Aziraphale begins to give away books in this series (something his character has never done in thousands of years) as it suggests that he belongs in the Terry Pratchett camp of literary scholarship; only ever give people the stories you want to give them and the rest can be cruched by a steam roller. Rob Wilkins commited to fulfilling this part of the will when he travelled to a exhibition in Wiltshire and did indeed crush the harddrive containing all Pratchett’s future work with a bulldozer. These two characters; one real and another made almost real by storytelling, gave their respective gifts to society with a kind of reluctance which can only be matched by a true artist.
And this is where we come to the business of art for art’s sake. The show revels in the space between mega futurism and homely nastalgia. Aziriphale and his shop nurture a street which contains a failing record store, while heaven or his head office, is the most sterile office building imaginable. The minimalist offices of angels and their lackies are hard to quantify. It is impossible to see what angels do with their time. Aziriphale’s offices are in opposition to his bookshop — a purely human endeavour. There is nothing that need to be read in heaven, everything there is true and right. Human’s break that model of political rule though, which was the original premise of Good Omens. The angels and demons who understand earth know that there is a grey area between right and wrong. Hell is a beaurocracy which reminds the view er of Terry Pratchett’s Eric, in which demons torment people in hell with needless paperwork and forced expsure to holiday photo albums. Misery is built into needless red tape and squalid tedium. Heaven is regimented inevitable righteousnous and hell is ineficient admin on grand scale. The human existence, Gaiman tells us, is found somewhere in between where people do what they love even though it makes their life harder, because following a dream makes life worth living.
One of the finest acheivements of Good Omens 2 is it’s astethic dream of street life in London. Both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman have used London in previous work. Gaiman turned London upside down in Neverwhere and Pratchett’s Ahnk-Morepork is at least in part based on London (as well as a couple of other unrevealed cities). Both authors understand that making reality a magical place is the true gateway to all fantasy fiction. Authors can only make wonder and monsters from the experiences they hold in their internal model of reality — their brains.
“a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read…”
Both authors also know that the places where humans spend their time are magic in a way. In Guards! Guards!, Pratchett writes, “The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.” Meanwhile Gaiman has noted that people a universes in of themselves — each with a driver unqiue in comparison to any other. in The Sandman he writes, “Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.” In essence, Good Omens 2 is a true reflection of those two compatiable visions. Gaiman makes the angel and demon at the centre of his story human, by showing the audiance their journey to understanding that they too have universes within them, libraries of experiences millions of years old. They are a pair, inseperable, everything will be okay if they remian in the pendula swing from good to evil and back again together. The asthetics of the show is achieved with penache that proves Gaiman is the only person who could have continued leading the dream which he and Pratchett began together three decades ago.
“No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds…”
London is the centre of the world in a lot of ways; a colonial metropolis with residents from all six continents and frequent visitors of all creeds. Good Omens 2 atempts to be honest about London. Gaiman includes a diverse cast with the backing of well thought out character biographies, much of which are kept from the audience but remain central to the positon of character within plot. Maggie and Nina are an exellent example of this, for although the construction of their sub-plot in the series does feel clunky in places, contrived and forgetting the importance of the flow of relationships, their characters are deeper and more meaningful to the plot than the audience could be aware of from the beginning of the story. They are symptom of a different type of storytelling which is reminiscent of V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street and John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Good Omens 2 is a world building anatomy of three different species. Two hold up a mirror to the other. In turn, humans explain life to angels and demons.
The anatomy means that the story of Good Omens 2 feels very different to that of its predecessor. The original is a comparibly linear exposition of the grey area between good and evil while this series has been designed to build a world for David Tennat and Michael Sheen to live in, the perfect couple of angel and demon. The ending of the series feels very much like the introduction to a new linear story line — which I will not mention any further — and is a break from the illumination of ‘Azriphale’s Bookshop, A life’.
However, that life is important and takes us into the fuure or adaptations and stories for story’s sake. The bookshop and environs speak to the current penchant to politicize storylines and become willfully combative in response to perceived attacks on the dogmatic scritptures of society. Is this a fair accusation or review of Good Omens and it’s authors? There are often many accusations of pandering to social justice that are thrown at those who include diverse characters. As unfair as it is in the present day, it is also a gross misestimation of Pratchett and Gaiman, both of whom introduced characters of all descents and backgrounds into their work from the 1970’s onwards. Terry Pratchett’s dwarves in the Discworld novels are characters for whom no such thing as gender exists, and Gaiman wrote his Desire of The Endless as a androginous wonder of both genders and sexes. He also wrote his titular character of Anansi Boys for Lenny Henry; the actor recorded the audiobook and is adapting the novel for television. These authors are no friends of those who would not include people beyond the fringes of central society in their work. Good Omens 2 continues that trend with a level of respect which flagrantly endorses diginity for all in a modern and timeless world.
“I think the point was. If you want answers. Come back when you can make a whale.”
Which brings me to the voice in Neil Gaiman’s head; ‘what would Terry Pratchett do?’ Gaiman was concious of making sure that desicions were made to ensure that nothing was taken out which Prattchet would be unhappy with. A prime example of his voice in the background was in Gaiman’s desicion to demand the right to blow up Agnes Nutter on screen rather than submit to the production company’s wish to use a cheaper option — illusions to the historic scene. Pratchett would have said no so Gaiman stuck to his guns. Rob Wilkins is also an important protagonist in the way these desicions play out. He is clearly determined to endorse Pratchett’s legacy at all costs and trusts Gaiman enough to protect Pratchett from the kind of thing that happened in the television show Night Watch — the worst adaptation of any book ever made.
The question remains, how much of the new series has stayed true to the prinicples of Pratchett set out in the first series? We get a glimpse of the thought process in moments during the show that ooze with the influence of Pratchett. in the past, Gaiman has said that he was amazed to find that he and Pratchett had the same kind of mind. Here in the series, when Job comes back to his wife and she asks him what God has told him and what it meant, the exchange ends with Job saying, “I think the point was. If you want answers. Come back when you can make a whale.” in this moment you can see something happen. Gaiman has taken inspiration from the wonder you can find in Pratchett’s magic and atheism, to make a moment of profound absurdity 29% percent funnier.
The audience of Good Omens is obligated to remember how all this started. Gaiman recalls the experience of writing Good Omens and it is rank with the experience of creating with ones coconspriator friend. Pratchett would leave messages on Gaiman’s answer phone machine, “Get up, get up you bastard! I’ve just written a good bit!”. In that quote, Good Omen’s many fans have a reason for the shape of the telvision series. It was not written for us — obviously it works out better for Gaiman if we enjoy it and binge on the storyline multiple times. Everything about the series describes a love letter to a world he and Pratchett created together, and which he is now he custodian, while Pratchett’s memory watches on from the sideline. The series provides a vehicle for Gaiman to tell a story that many have waited for, and in a small way the street which Aziriphale’s bookshop dominates is also a chance for world to grasp hold of the memory of Terry Pratchett for a few more moments which will last in perpetuity on the digital stage. This show was never about reminicising with history, rather moving things forward in storytelling, and showing how different mediums can enhance the experience of stories originally told in a seperate medium.
As this mode of storytelling reaches through the past into the future of book adaptations and cultural memory enhancement we can imagine how future artists might take inspiration from past stories to create new narratives which are effective, original, and stand on their own. It also provides a answer to the quandry about whether art for art’s sake can continue to exist in the 21st century. Gaiman and others like him will try their best to never let it die.
