actually there's very little in them that goes against TV canon. I wonder if that's partly because it was a very good adaptation?
Yes. And also because the TV adaptation was controlled by one of the original authors. And also because that original author absorbed the fanon over the past 20 years.
Good Omens wasn't a book about an angel and a demon. Good Omens was a book with an ensemble cast, of which an angel and a demon between them constituted less than a sixth of the pages. Much of the book was dedicated to Anathema, and the Them and the Four Horsemen, with Shadwell and Newton Pulsifer and Madam Tracy as additional occupiers of lines and words.
But of the ensemble cast of characters, the fans latched onto the angel and the demon. Those were the two who captured the imagination, the two the readers universally fell in love with. Those were the two the authors were continually questioned about in the decades since the book was published. And maybe the authors fell in love with those two as much as the readers did, because when Neil Gaiman talked about the sequel that was never written, he talked about the angel and the demon living in the South Downs.
So when Neil wrote the TV adaptation, he made the angel and the demon the central characters in a way they never were in the book. But because that's the way everyone remembers the book, with the angel and the demon taking centre stage, the TV adaptation feels absolutely perfect.
no subject
Yes. And also because the TV adaptation was controlled by one of the original authors. And also because that original author absorbed the fanon over the past 20 years.
Good Omens wasn't a book about an angel and a demon. Good Omens was a book with an ensemble cast, of which an angel and a demon between them constituted less than a sixth of the pages. Much of the book was dedicated to Anathema, and the Them and the Four Horsemen, with Shadwell and Newton Pulsifer and Madam Tracy as additional occupiers of lines and words.
But of the ensemble cast of characters, the fans latched onto the angel and the demon. Those were the two who captured the imagination, the two the readers universally fell in love with. Those were the two the authors were continually questioned about in the decades since the book was published. And maybe the authors fell in love with those two as much as the readers did, because when Neil Gaiman talked about the sequel that was never written, he talked about the angel and the demon living in the South Downs.
So when Neil wrote the TV adaptation, he made the angel and the demon the central characters in a way they never were in the book. But because that's the way everyone remembers the book, with the angel and the demon taking centre stage, the TV adaptation feels absolutely perfect.