Good Omens - Review

Season 2 of Good Omens premieres July 28 on Prime Video.

Amazon’s adaptation of Good Omens exhausted all of the material in the novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman in season 1, but Gaiman and co-showrunner and director Douglas Mackinnon have managed to make the first five of season 2’s six episodes feel like a natural sequel to the apocalyptic comedy. That continuity cuts both ways though as Good Omens’ greatest strength — the relationship between the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and the demon Crowley (David Tennant) — continues to shine, while the quality still notably dips whenever the duo isn’t on screen.

After averting armageddon in season 1, the prissy Aziraphale and the bad-boy-even-by-demonic-standards Crowley have settled back into enjoying life on Earth. But when the supreme archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) shows up at Aziraphale’s bookshop with no memories, he sets off a new farcical conflict between Heaven and Hell that Aziraphale and Crowley have to navigate with their signature mix of amusing bickering and lighthearted scheming.

Gabriel was by far the best of the supporting characters in season 1, and Hamm does a great job with an expanded role. He’s earnest and vulnerable as he tries to earn Aziraphale’s protection, while flashbacks showing him unquestioningly enacting Heaven’s questionable wishes demonstrate the danger that lurks beneath his joviality. 

Gabriel is a much better vessel for plot than the rest of the returning angelic chorus, whose scenes in the stark white offices of Heaven are visually dull exposition dumps. The soul-sucking bureaucracy of Hell has at least improved this season, with Beelzebub taking on a new face (Shelley Conn) and clearly working her own agenda. The funniest scenes that don’t directly involve Crowley and Aziraphale come from the direct continuation of the Blitz plot from season 1, as a trio of dead Nazi spies are given the chance to postpone their eternal torture and return to Earth as zombies. A look at what would await them in Hell continues the show’s affection for Monty Python-style animation, while their antics back in London have the goofy charm of Shaun of the Dead. 

Several other actors from season 1 are back in new roles with weaker results. Miranda Richardson is doing solid work vamping it up as the ambitious demon Shax, but the role feels like a lesser version of Michelle Gomez’s take on Lilith in Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. And while Nina Sosanya and Maggie Service were hilarious last season as satanic nuns, they simultaneously have more screen time and less to do as shopkeepers who Aziraphale is trying to pair off. The matchmaking is meant to help Aziraphale work out his own feelings for Crowley, and the plot does have its high points, like when Aziraphale turns a business association meeting into a Jane Austen-style ball. But the characters – also named Maggie and Nina – don’t get enough development over the course of five episodes to make it clear if they’d be a good couple without mystical meddling. The handling of Nina’s current partner, only present in angry and paranoid text messages, feels especially clumsy.

But Good Omens is an absolute delight when it just leans into having Tennant and Sheen bounce off each other. One of the best sections of season 1 – an interlude showing how the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley developed across the eons – had no counterpart in the book. Season 2 leans into that focus as it chronicles their silly but often poignant adventures together, from the Big Bang to graverobbing.

There’s a solid mystery brewing this season, even if it does seem to be heading towards a fairly cheesy conclusion about the power of love. But the highlights come along the way in moments like Aziraphale cooing to an exasperated Crowley that he’s found a clue or Crowley chugging six shots of espresso and literally smoldering with manic energy as he tries to decide how to get his eternal partner out of his latest predicament.

There's a solid mystery brewing this season

Co-written by Gaiman and John Finnemore, Good Omens isn’t as sharp as The Good Place, but it has the same formula: a zany examination of the nature of morality and the capacity for change. The biblical tale of Job, a pious man who lost everything because of a bet between God and Satan, is used as a way to tackle the philosophical principles of how evil triumphs when good fails to act and the righteousness of rebelling against an unjust order. 

The version of Job’s saga in Good Omens also involves adorable lizards, Frances McDormand returning as the patronizing voice of God, Crowley tempting Aziraphale with a plate of ribs, and Gabriel explaining how babies are made with absolute unearned confidence. It’s the show at its best, skewering religion like Kevin Smith’s Dogma, while anchoring the narrative in the relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale and how they make each other and the whole universe a better place.