I was also hoping to love it, it’s a favorite book that I bought when it was first published and have re-read many times. I loved the BBC radio play, but the show did not click with me at all. I keep reading rave reviews and wondering why I’m not one of them. Part of it is I thought that the narration of God didn’t quite get the right tone, and the first 20 minutes of episode 3 where they went into huge detail of Azriphale & Crowley’s history (a single paragraph in the book) felt extraneous. They also didn’t seem to spend much time with the kids at all. Michale McKean seemed very miscast as Shadwell as well.
I’m glad so many people are enjoying it and that the book is finally on the best seller list, but the show disappointed me. Ah well, can’t like everything
“What a shocking bad hat!” I just want to give a shout-out to the book where I discovered this catchphrase, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Full of odd treasures like that.
Crowley briefly considered putting the tape on which he’d trapped Hastur into the Bentley. He decided against it because he might be a bastard, but you could only go so far.
As a fan of the book, I really enjoyed it too - and my wife did, which I consider a success as she isn’t a Terry Pratchett fan.
I think some of your criticisms are valid, and I would have liked less narration and more visual gags - I wonder if a desire to stick pretty closely to the source material hampered here (particularly if there was a desire to ensure some of Terry’s gags got in). There were a few they could have easily got in but didn’t - I was disappointed that they didn’t have death refuse to answer the “When did Elvis die” question, for example.
The thing I will miss most about this series being over is that I cannot recall any show that was able to make me fall asleep more quickly. I think I must have started watching each of those 6 episodes 4 times each before making it through any of them. As to the show… Eh. I read the book but don’t remember anything about it other than: I didn’t like it much – which was also true of American Gods. This show is not nearly as good as that American Gods show. It was American Gods Lite, maybe. Diet Gluten-Free American Gods Fun Size.
You are not alone. As other commenters have mentioned it felt very dumbed down and way too much exposition. I try not to be the that-wasn’t-in-the-book! guy but the new stuff seemed very stilted and heavy handed (which is exactly how I’d describe the little Neil Gaiman I’ve read). On the other hand, my wife and daughter seemed to enjoy it.
What a perfect summation of how I feel about pretty much any adaptation, and why I tend to avoid them like the plague - at least if they’re adapting a book I care about. I wish they’d just concentrate on making an original work suited from the start for the strengths of the medium and quit shoehorning, watering-down, abridging and bastardizing works that were made for the page, forever imprinting someone else’s (or some focus group’s) singular vision of the work on everyone who comes to it later.
I made the mistake of watching the LotR movies, and while they of course did a good job, they’ve ruined the books for me. I remember my first readings had a magical, hard to describe internal imagery that was personal to me (kind of a mostly monochrome Maxfield Parish ambiance) that I’ve never been able to recapture in re-reading since Peter Jackson’s interpretation overwrote it.
Of course Michael McKean has been in a lot of great stuff. And I love him in all the things you mention. But I, too, can’t but think of him in Laverne & Shirley, where he and David Lander raised the bar for an otherwise meh sitcom. We even saw the beginnings of all that great music in Lenny & The Squigtones. I had their LP, which is criminally unavailable these days.
I really liked the film version of Fight Club even though I first loved the novel. For me, the choices they made that suited film better really worked. Another where the film is as-good-as-but-different-to the original printed work is Akira. Otomo really accelerates the story to concentrate on the pertinent elements. You do lose the long arc character and setting building, but the film is not worse because of having done so.
B
PS. Not convinced by the Good Omens adaptation yet and the fact that if you’re not with the Amazon eco-system they make it artificially hard to watch on the telly.
Listed to audio version several months ago to refresh, laughed continuously (funniest bit to me was the conversation about whale brains). Watched the series, laughed maybe two or three times. Hung in there, but it was really only interesting whenever A and C were onscreen together. Adam was much more of a dolt in the book. And I just couldn’t picture anybody but Matt Lucas from Little Britain in the role of Madame Tracy (sorry Miranda). Clever new twist at the end with the holy water/hellfire thing. Not bad, not great.
