Amazon must have just entered eighth grade, because that’s usually around the time budding young nerds finish up the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, are told, “Hey, if you liked those, check this out,” and are handed a copy of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s comic novel Good Omens. But unlike the rest of us, Amazon has billions of dollars to play around with, so once it finished the book, it decided to turn it into a miniseries. And as Variety reports, the streaming service has hired Michael Sheen and David Tennant to star in that miniseries, creating a supernova of British-ness that will surely consume us all.
Good Omens is Gaiman’s first novel, a collaboration with longtime fantasy author Pratchett, who died in 2015. The story is “set in 2018 on the brink of an apocalypse as humanity prepares for a final judgment,” which used to be a fun premise for a fantasy story, and now just reads like a future newspaper headline. It concerns an angel named Aziraphale and a demon named Crowley (Sheen will play the former, and Tennant the latter) who team up to try and prevent the end of the world, while trying to keep an eye on the Antichrist, who has accidentally been confused for someone else. And yes, the Venn diagram between kids who read this book and those who unashamedly make “we are the knights who say ‘Ni!’” references in class is pretty much just a circle.
“I first read Good Omens as a teenager and it’s been one of my favorite stories ever since,” Sheen says in a statement, though of course he puts a “u” in “favorite,” and also they call teenagers “lorries.” This will be the actor’s first series for a streaming service, unlike Tennant, who played the villain in season one of Jessica Jones. The story notes Tennant’s role as the Doctor in Doctor Who, but somehow fails to mention that his performance in the Fright Night remake is the best job anyone’s ever done of mocking Criss Angel. The series will consist of six one-hour episodes. No release date has been announced.