Good Omens

Diverting and mostly pleasurable. ... The BBC Studios production is studded with piquant performances by veteran actors, mostly British.

Gaiman manages the not-inconsiderable feat of capturing his narrative’s race-against-the-clock propulsion, all while making plenty of time for an overstuffed cast of characters and numerous detours, rewinds, asides and demented flights of fancy. Good Omens boasts an assured sense of tone from the very start. ... Good Omens wouldn’t soar without its two leads, who are so perfectly (mis)matched that they immediately elevate the series to must-see status.

The story itself falls apart and reassembles several times per each hour-long episode, but when viewed as a collection of clever sketches by master performers it’s a fun frolic — and with a cast of biblical proportions.

The end result is a feel-good romp and creative triumph that is easily digestible and never flags in search of entertainment.

Good Omens soars when it focuses on the buddy comedy between Aziraphale and Crowley, who are tasked with keeping mortals on the straight and narrow and luring them away from it, respectively, neglect their duties, either by aiding the first couple cast out from Eden, or by partaking of the many wonderful things humans have created. ... It’s when the series looks elsewhere for its drama and humor that it starts to falter.

With Gaiman at the helm, and with an ample amount of time to do the book’s nuances justice, Good Omens succeeds much better than any recent Gaiman (or Pratchett) adaptation in memory. But we’re still ultimately left with a screenplay that faithfully emphasizes Good Omens’ plot rather than its profundities or literary flourishes.

Good Omens is frivolous in tone to the point of being glib, while its recurring jokes recur so often that they run out their welcome (Crowley gets scenes scored to virtually every track in the Queen songbook, while Aziraphale’s story lines frequently feature his obsession with eating). What sets the series apart is the relationship between two polar opposites who end up realizing, as the best antagonists do, that they’re not that different after all.

When Gaiman and Mackinnon return to those actors [Sheen and Tennant], the series becomes the compelling story of an unlikely friendship, a sort of undefined rom-com between two immortals with the end of the world as a quirky backdrop. That’s the “Good Omens” worth watching. The rest of it’s not bad—not world-ending, but not exactly heavenly, either.

The Lord really does work in mysterious ways in Good Omens, which -- given the recent abundance of apocalyptic series -- is surprisingly good, and even when it lags, considerable fun.

Even though the major pieces are there — Aziraphale, Crowley, Satan, God, apocalypse — the minor bits aren’t magical enough on their own. It doesn’t quite pull together as a great, glorious, goofy Almighty plan. But it is still fun, and stylish, and it has enough of the book’s original quirky spark to feel worthwhile.

The dialogue between enemies Crowley and Aziraphale mostly compensated, although it occasionally was predictable.

It doesn’t quite work, because it doesn’t quite disguise the fact that beneath the razzle-dazzle, every character apart from the main two is tissue-paper thin. This is particularly true of the female parts. ... When both Crowley and Aziraphale are offscreen, things fall flat. In fact, a distinct sense that everyone is just marking time until they come back creeps in.

Good Omens is at its best when it’s a Divine (Buddy) Comedy. Sheen and Tennant, wonderful actors unafraid to let out their inner cheeseball, have great chemistry and know how to sell a joke. ... Whenever the show departs from the two leads, however, the life seeps out of it.

Good Omens‘ six episodes feel breezy thanks to a slick directing job from Douglas Mackinnon (Knightfall), but its narratively all over the place. To be fair, that’s often by design.

Good Omens continues to have its special effects moments. But there aren’t enough of them to overcome the basic tedium afflicting it.

The six-episode limited series loses momentum as it goes, making the teased possibility of a sequel less and less appealing. Still, the comic pairing of Sheen and Tennant could carry a story all its own, if only their creators would leave them alone to their own devices.

There’s about 50% too much content distracting from the core strength of Neil Gaiman’s latest series: the glorious onscreen chemistry shared by David Tennant ("Doctor Who") and Michael Sheen ("The Good Fight").

It’s a lot, and sometimes the pace is more exhausting than bracing. At the same time, the show’s underlying ideas about tribalism and friendship are pretty commonplace. Still, Tennant and Sheen make an ideal buddy-comedy duo; their banter does justice to Gaiman (who adapted the novel and is an executive producer of the miniseries) and the late Pratchett’s witty prose.

The end of the world sounds pretty terrible, but turns out it's tolerable as long as David Tennant is there.