A marriage made in heaven

Biblical buddy comedy ‘Good Omens’ returns for a second chapter. It manages to pull off the rare feat of succeeding beyond its divine source material, writes Nick Hilton

- Nick Hilton

How do you top the end of the world? That’s the task for Good Omens season two (Amazon Prime Video), which picks up where the Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett novel left off: with Armageddon averted and a fragile truce established between Heaven and Hell. But, as dramatic stakes go, slaying the Four Horsemen with a flaming sword doesn’t leave you much wiggle room to crank up the pitch, and so, instead, Good Omens goes back to what it does best. A biblical buddy comedy of epic proportions.

With his bookshop restored, fussy angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) is enjoying a quiet life on Earth, with the companionship of rogue demon Crowley (David Tennant). That all changes when chief angel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) shows up at the shop, stark naked, seemingly with no idea who he is. “His royal smugness”, as Crowley brands him, is reduced to a simple naif, rechristened “Jim”. But while Aziraphale and Crowley try to unravel the mystery of how, and why, the Archangel has shown up, nude and amnesiac, the forces of Heaven and Hell are on his trail too. And so, in place of the world’s end, we have a galactic farce. Dude, Where’s My Archangel?

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