'Good Omens' Season 1 preview: With the wheels of Armageddon in motion, all hope lies in an angel and a demon
Neil Gaiman's 'Good Omens' begins with a lesson in history, sort of. Frances McDormand lends her voice to God and gives us a lowdown on what happened when the Earth was created. She also tells us that the end is inevitable.
So begins the story of angel Aziraphale (played by Michael Sheen) and demon Crowley (played by David Tennant) who are the catalysts for The End — they must ensure, in their own respective capacities, that the Armageddon happens. But things don't go as per plan.
The story begins with McDormand's God explaining that it was roughly 6,000 years ago that Eve left the Garden of Eden with Adam, who had a flaming sword that Aziraphale gave him. It is also revealed that it is Crowley who tempts Eve to eat the cursed apple.
The narrative jumps to a cult of satanic nuns who are responsible for swapping a newborn child with the infant devil. The plan is that the young devil must go back home with the American ambassador (played by Nick Offerman). But the old switcheroo complicates things further and the infant devil goes with the wrong family to the wrong home in a wrong town.
Based on the 1990 novel 'Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch' by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, the Amazon Prime Video series is a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan and the coming of the end times.
Even as Crowley and Aziraphale are entrusted with the responsibility that the both of them would happily denounce, they are too content with their lives on Earth and, so, are not looking forward to the coming war.
Having spent thousands of years living amidst Earth's mortals, the duo is more than just complacent in their attitude towards the war — they genuinely love the planet and all its beauty — natural and man-made. They also love humans. One day, all Crowley does to create chaos as a demon is to bring down the network in London because he finds people grappling with network troubles evil.
On the other hand, Aziraphale loves eating fancy (sushi being one of his favorites), visiting restaurants where the chefs know him by name, and living in the crowd like just another human.
Following an administrative goof-up by Chattering Order of St. Beryl, a satanic order of nuns who were tasked with switching a baby with the Antichrist, Aziraphale and Crowley now must come together to make sure that the war doesn't happen.
Together, they try to sabotage the coming of the end times.
It is no surprise that demons from Hell are excited about the war, but Aziraphale cannot understand why Heaven is so hell-bent (see what we did there?) on it.
Like Jon Hamm's Archangel Gabriel puts it, a war must happen for them to win it. Gabriel is the leader of the forces of Heaven — and a bit too harsh on Aziraphale for being an angel.
Fun fact: Gabriel as a character was only mentioned once in the original novel written by Gaiman and Pratchett. The role was supposed to be elaborated on in the sequel to the book — which never came. So, Gaiman incorporated parts of the plot of the planned sequel into the TV series.
So now that great war in 'Game of Thrones' has come to an end — and that too rather disappointedly — we now have the Armageddon in 'Good Omens' to look forward to.
We hope it will offer some humorous respite.