TV #42 of 2023:
Good Omens, season 2
This unexpected follow-up just about squeaks by on a character level, but it’s a far cry from either the previous season or the increasingly-distant source text of the hilarious original novel. To recap: that 1990 book by future showrunner Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett was adapted roughly in its entirety for the first year of this Amazon production, and no one expected that there would be anything further in the pipeline. Then Gaiman announced a surprise second season (and his hopes for a third), apparently drawing from conversations he and his co-author had once had about where they might someday take a sequel.
The result here is decidedly mixed, and in my opinion rarely actually feels like classic Good Omens. Perhaps it’s the missing element of Sir Terry’s typical madcap contributions, or perhaps just the fact that most of the bumbling mortal ensemble hasn’t been brought back for this next go-round: no Adam and his cohort and family and dog, no Newton and Anathema and Shadwell, and so on (although a few cast members do return, somewhat confusingly, in separate new roles). Instead the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley take up even more of the plot than before, even though their central storyline of the archangel Gabriel showing up on earth with amnesia is pretty threadbare.
As if in recognition of the fact that there isn’t quite enough action there to stretch out over six episodes, most installments include lengthy flashback interludes to the supernatural beings’ long history together on earth. Some of these sequences are fun — I quite like the Job one, and not just for the stunt-casting of David Tennant’s famous father-in-law and fellow Doctor Who alum Peter Davison in that part — but mostly they drag on well past their entertainment value and don’t contribute much to the larger narrative.
I do still enjoy the main protagonists and the dry humor of this particular interpretation of Heaven and Hell — not to mention the increasing levels of queer representation — so sure, I’ll keep watching if there’s any more of this show to come. (At six hours a season, it’s not like it’s a major time commitment, anyway.) But this new material seems more like a Gaiman vanity project than a story that urgently needed to be told, and I can’t say that I’d especially recommend it. Or to put that differently, if a sequel anything like this actually had been written and published, I don’t think it would have sold nearly as well as the cult classic that spawned it.
[Content warning for gun violence, torture, and gore.]
★★★☆☆
Like this review?
–Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
–Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
–Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
–Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 