The world may well and truly be ending, but Amazon Prime has offered a small bright light. The streaming service announced a premiere date for Good Omens on Wednesday; the limited six episode series will debut on May 31. Thank goodness because we need to see David Tennant as the demon Crowley and Michael Sheen as the angel Aziraphale in action STAT. The unlikely duo is working together to stop an impending apocalypse because neither of them are quite ready to watch the world burn. But they have a formidable foe in the silver-tongued Satan, who will be played by none other than Benedict Cumberbatch.
Benedict Cumberbatch as Satan. Let that sink in. He’ll be voicing the devil, who will be an animated character in the live-action series. Neil Gaiman told Collider about the animation, saying “We’ve gone for something that is fairly realistic all the way through. The kind of VFX where it is obviously VFX, but it’s not obviously VFX. So our Satan – essentially a 500-foot high multi-horned Satan from your nightmares.”
Good Omens is based on the 1990 book of the same name (well, the book’s full title is Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter) by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. The adaptation is set in 2018 and will see the angel and demon trying to locate an 11-year-old boy (who also happen to be the Antichrist) and stop him from ending the world as we know it. They’ve been living in the world of humans for all of time, and they don’t want to let go.
A look at the opening credits, animated in a lovely storybook-esque style, hints at the epic scale of their bold and wacky quest:
The animation has biblical and apocalyptical imagery–full on fish coming out of the seas and falling from the sky, folks–and also a whole lot of weirdness, which the book is known for. Good and Evil are essentially going to war, each trying to outdo the other. We humans are just stuck in the middle.
The series also stars Jon Hamm, Frances McDormand, Nick Offerman, and many more. Catch up on everything we know about Good Omens so far.
Images: Amazon Prime