The Nice and Accurate Good Omens TV Companion: Your guide to Armageddon and the series based on the bestselling novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

I read the Good Omens novel only a few weeks before watching the Amazon-BBC miniseries. I enjoyed the novel, and absolutely LOVED the show. With co-author Neil Gaiman as showrunner, a brilliant cast and a dedicated director, the show perfectly captured the spirit of the novel. It had new material to surprise long-time fans, but much of the original story as well. I enjoyed it so much that I ordered this companion book as soon as I discovered it.

The book provides a lot of context for the show, including concept art and abundant information about the adaptation process. There’s also some historical background on previous attempts to adapt the material and an exploration of the filmmaking process (location, casting, special effects). show more One running theme throughout was the desire of Gaiman, and by extension all the filmmakers, to honor Terry Patchett. In addition to his famous fedora and many of his books in Aziraphael’s shop, Gaiman took extra pains to ensure the parts of the novel that were distinctly Terry’s made it into the adaptation- such as Agnes Nutter. Moreover, there are several heartwarming anecdotes about the friendship between the two authors.

However, the best parts for me were when the book addressed the changes from the novel to the screen. Episode three’s unusually long precredit sequence is once such instance and Gaiman goes into detail about why he created it for the show. As a screenwriter, he is keenly aware of the differences between the two mediums and what audiences need from each.

Overall, this is an excellent tie-in for fans of the show and novel. It’s a beautiful book, with many behind the scenes pictures, artwork and interviews. Highly recommended. show less

Companion books to movies and TV shows are always a bit of a dice roll when it comes to their quality. While they're usually filled with interesting anecdotes and tons of pictures, they have a habit of feeling little more than a fluff piece used as advertisement for that film/TV series. Luckily, this isn't the case with either of the two books released as tie-ins for Amazon Prime and BBC's recent adaptation of Good Omens. Both books - a traditional companion and a book featuring all of Neil Gaiman's scripts for the series - are excellent reads, managing to be both informative and worthwhile reads even for those who know everything there is to know about the series and its creation.

This is a gargantuan of a book. Dimension-wise, it's as show more big as a sheet of paper and as thick as a textbook. Between its covers is a very well-written account of the creation of the Good Omens TV adaptation, from its infancy all the way through its post-production. Included are an enormous array of interviews with the cast and crew, plenty of photographs from behind the scenes, and a litany of other tidbits that should please even the biggest fan of the series. Whyman's time spent on the set has given him a great vantage point from which to write this account of the making of the series and the interviews throughout the book reveal plenty of new information about the creation of the series that fans won't be able to find anywhere else, making this a must-read for those who want to know everything about this series.

I appreciated how well-structured this book was. Many other companion books of this nature hop around from subject to subject as they detail the creation of whatever thing they're covering, but here, it's formatted (more or less) in an episode-by-episode basis, covering topics as they appear within the narrative of the show. It's a great way of formatting such a book and lets readers read behind the scenes secrets of the episodes they just watched as they can pretty easily tell when the subject switches to something that hasn't occurred yet. That being said, I wouldn't read this until you've seen the series as it does contain some spoilers for the show and how it differs from the novel.

I don't often talk about the physical aspects of a book - as I'm typically an ebook reader - but with this one, I must. It's simply a gorgeous book. It's bound very well - though slightly tighter than I'd prefer - which makes it very easy to lay on a table and read. It's very big, which does make it a bit hard to hold but it's no worse than holding a textbook (and weighs a bit less than an average textbook). And, best of all, are the pages themselves. They're thick, glossy pages that reproduce color remarkably well. It feels like a very high-quality book which, for the price, is pretty impressive.

Overall, The Nice and Accurate Good Omens TV Companion is an excellent companion book to an excellent TV series. It's filled with a massive amount of information, lots of wonderful photos, and a ton of revealing interviews, all bound together in a beautiful book. It's a must-read for fans of the series and I absolutely recommend it. show less

Film books are one of my favourite types of fan memorabilia, since they take us behind the scenes for in-depth explorations of our favourite cinematic universes, and the Good Omens TV Companion is definitely a solid guide. I almost expected the book to be written by Good Omens co-author Neil Gaiman himself, but he’s a busy dude on the set of the show and having another writer come in to do cast and crew interviews provides a certain amount of necessary distance to the source material. We can definitely tell that author Matt Whyman likes Good Omens well enough, but considering the passionate fandom around the story I expected him to be a touch more involved. Maybe he was just taking an overly professional tone in his compilation of show more interviews and keeping his distance from the cast and crew (who definitely are stoked to work on the show), but the writing came off as a bit cold and clinical in a way that made the narrative a bit blah throughout. This is Good Omens, for antichrist’s sake, we’re supposed to have a laugh! I will give him credit for being thorough, though, since he clearly did his work interviewing all of the crucial cast and crew, bringing out their personal stories from the set, and emphasising the crucial parts of filming that would pique readers’ interest such as set locations, costume design, and the actors’ character development techniques. Strung together in easily accessible chapters which focus on specific characters, scenes, and locations (and including a handy index!) the resulting volume is a solid exploration behind the scenes of the Good Omens tv show. show less

I wasn't wowed by the BBC/Amazon Good Omens adaptation, but one element of it that I enjoyed unreservedly about it was the set/costume design. There are some beautiful behind the scenes photos and glimpses of production art included here, and I enjoyed some of the anecdotes about how various effects were achieved. (They really did burn down the bookshop set, complete with its thousands of books, urk! They really did blow up an actual Bentley!)

When it comes to the interviews with the cast, however, there's not much here that's not going to appear in any standard newspaper piece that draws heavily on press releases. It's all very glossy and polished, but it's also clear despite the author's rhapsodying about the performances that this show more book was written well before production on the show was finished. show less

I absolutely loved the recent Amazon TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens. And what do I do when I absolutely love something? That's right, I buy books about it! So, of course, I had to pick up this companion book, which features a look behind the scenes, including interviews with pretty much everybody both in front of and behind the cameras.

I have to say, the text isn't all that impressive. There's not huge amounts of substance to most of it, and often feels like it's trying to hype the show as much as it is to bring us into the making of it, which just seems totally unnecessary. There are also a lot of little factual inaccuracies, in things like the descriptions of what happens in particular scenes. Nothing show more glaringly horrible, but it does rather give the impression that the author hadn't actually watched the show. Although that perhaps ought to be forgivable, seeing as the book was almost certainly in the works while the series was still being made, so presumably he actually hadn't had the chance to watch it first.

On the other hand, though, visually and physically the book is really nice. Hell, I'd say it's almost worth it just for the wonderful cover art, but there are also lots and lots of pictures, some of which help give you a really good sense of just how rich and detailed the sets were. Indeed, the parts of the text that I found far and away the most interesting had to do with the set design. The production designer has some fascinating things to say about the visual themes he used on the sets, and his attention to detail is just staggering.

So, while I can't remotely call this a must-have for fans of the show, it was at least worth a look, and I'm sure it's going to look very, very pretty on my bookshelf. show less

I love behind-the-scenes looks into my favorite media, and this provides an excellent look. There were several things I wanted to know more about after watching the show and reading the original novel, and most of them got answered in this book!! It's wonderful to read the interviews from the actors and crew talking about how much they loved working on the project and with each other.

A beautiful book with gorgeous photographs and artwork. A fabulous addition to Good Omens landscape.