Is Good Omens Cozy?

How do you make the end of the world funny, comforting and downright delightful? This episode we look at the world of Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens book and TV show adaptation and its view of humanity as a whole.

Follow me!
Twitter/X: @GreeksGeeksPod
Tiktok: @SabrinaSalisburyWriter

Sources:
Good Omens- Neil Gailman and Terry Pratchett
Adapting Revelation: Good Omens as Comic Corrective- Amy Lea Clemons
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/148125942
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-omen-1976
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/revelation/8
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/06/26/archives/the-screen-omen-is-nobodys-baby.html
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Revelation-to-John 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Greeks and Geeks, the podcast where I (your host Sabrina) take us on a persnickety but fun journey deep diving into the lore behind our favourite stories. Today we’ll be looking at Good Omens and asking ourselves the question- how do you make the end of times, the revelation, the apocalypse, cozy? And I will also be asking myself if, by the end of this podcast script I’ll actually be able to spell the word apocalypse the first time around. Probably not but it’ll be fun to see. You know how you always have one or two spellings that you can never quite grasp? 

(Thank you portion)

Anyways let get onto the story…

So what is Good Omens? The full title of the book, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, is a book written collaboratively by now-famous authors Neil Gaiman and late but great Sir Terry Pratchett. The book was published in 1990 and although initially the pair hosted a book signing in Manhattan to which nobody showed up, it has gone on to sell 5 million copies worldwide and had a hugely successful TV adaptation, the second season of which just recently came out this year. 

The plot, basically, revolves around an angel named Aziraphale and a demon named Crowley, who have lived on Earth since its creation and sort of become- ahem- friends in that time. Yep just friends. Best friends. Totally not an old married couple at all. Anyways they’ve come to find they actually quite like humanity and don’t want the end of times to, well begin. Unfortunately for them, the antichrist was accidentally swapped at birth, lost to the forces of heaven and hell, and given a normal upbringing in a quaint English village, so the Angel-Demon Duo team up to find him and stop the apocalypse from happening. There are other plots happening alongside this, such as the journey of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse and the descendent of the only true accurate prophet (and witch) as she attempts to also find the antichrist herself using her ancestors book of prophecies to guide her, but that’s the general gist of it.

I’m a huge fan of Good Omens, both the book and the TV show, so I knew as soon as I made this podcast that I was going to talk about them. In recent years there a growing popularity of a sub-genre called cozy fantasy. Cozy fantasy is usually (but not always) low-stakes, often character driven and gives you a warm, fuzzy sort of feeling. Think about the first part of The Lord of the Rings before they left the shire, though some people even consider things like The Hobbit to be cozy fantasy. Good Omens, for me, is on my list of cozy sort-of-fantasy novels. Now the end of the world isn’t exactly low stakes, so how did Pratchett and Gaiman create such a funny, weird comfort read out of something which is meant to be so horrifying? To do that, first we need to look at the scarier influences of the novel and I’ll try not to be a big baby about it. For reference, I’m not hiding under my desk as I write the next part of this script and I’m only about 47% sure I’m going to have a nightmare tonight.

Okay lets proceed to talk about two of the biggest influences the book draws on, The Book of Revelation and The Omen.

Revelations and the Omen (music here)

The book of Revelation was written by John. Nobody really knows who this John is, but evidence seems to date the book to around the Roman times. I’m not here to debate who this guy is though, just that he wrote the last book in the Bible. Although I’m really nosy and apparently there’s a lot of argument amongst Christians as to whether or not this books should be accepted but that’ll get me waaaay off topic, so I’ll have to look into THAT particular tea another time. But god (sorry- blasphemy) but satan (wait)- but someone do I love a good obscure academic “debate.” If you know any good obscure academic drama PLEASE tell me about it, its one of my favourite things.

So the Revelation opens with the prophet getting visions of the future and what will happen. There’s these Seven Seals of God the seven symbolic seals that secure the book or scroll that John sees in his vision. Over the course of the book, each seal is broken and apocalyptic events happen whenever they do. I won’t go through what happens when each seal is broken because that’s not really relevant, but I will summarise the book because there are some important features. 

Essentially the four horsemen, representing War, Famine, Death and Conquest, get released and lots of Really, really, really bad times happen to the humans on Earth. Wars, catastrophes, actual monsters and all that freaky stuff. It sounds absolutely horrifying but the beauty of Good Omens, is it frames these horrific moments as something humans are mainly confused or baffled about for example when fish fall from the sky in large numbers, the first question asked is if they’re fresh or cured. Meanwhile when the Kraken arises, and I quote “ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.”

Then you have Death. Death is an iconic, and very human-like, character in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. Although the Good Omens Death and Discworld Death are two canonically different characters, Good Omens Death he still retains a little bit of that Pratchett charm. When a delivery man dies before the apocalypse starts, Death collects his soul and comforts him by saying one of my favourite lines in book “Don’t think of it as dying, think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush.”

Ultimately, as readers, it’s hard for us to be totally frightened of the apocalypse when it’s framed as more baffling or comedic. All of these quotes are so weird and silly it turns the horror on its head.

But back to revelation. Evil looks like its about to take over completely and then Jesus returns to Earth with an army of angels and they create a newer, better world out of the ashes of the old one, which all the Good Christian Followers can take part in. It sounds scary and there’s obviously tons of suffering but ultimately a good outcome for those who believe in the word of God, right? It’s interesting that this book was written around the time where Christians were being mercilessly prosecuted by the Romans though. Despite the horrific suffering, there is a happy ending.

Also I know I said that I was only going to summarise the book, but in the book of Revelation, when the seventh seal is broken, I am literally quoting here, “heaven is silent for about half an hour.” To quote Kent Brockman “It’s in Revelations people!” And I don’t know why, but I find that quote really funny. As soon as I read it my brain immediately jumped to the oddly specific timings in Good Omens, like the creation of the world happening on Sunday 21st October 4004BC at exactly 9am because God liked to work early whilst he was still feeling fresh. I had to wonder if Pratchett or Gaiman read that passage in Revelations and were suitably inspired. If anyone is due to meet Gaiman please can you ask him for me, or at least send a message to him on Tumblr once the furore around season 2 dies down a bit.

But do you know something that ISN’T in revelations people? Adam. Or- rather- the antichrist. In Good Omens, it is the Antichrist, the son of Satan, who was supposed to act as the catalyst who kicks off to the apocalypse, but here he’s is nowhere to be found. At least not in the book of revelation. The antichrist is mentioned in a mere three passages in the Bible however those passages are significant. They do confirm that the antichrist is an important figure during the apocalypse and he’ll be the chief agent of Satan which, hello? That’s like the coolest title ever. That has to be some sort of heavy metal band name or album or something. His presence is said to be a sign of the end of times, but I didn’t catch anything about the antichrist being a specific catylist like he is in the book, the one that kicks it all off. Any theologians who can find me any reference to it, help me out.

This is a good time to introduce the second major inspo for Good Omens, and I feel really stupid for never realising it before hand. Because it’s so obvious that once I started my research I had to take five because…well it’s embarrassing. Don’t judge me too much, I wasn’t born when the original movie came out and I’ve never seen it.

Good Omens is partially a comedic parody of the horror film The Omen. Now for this part I admit…I’m going to have to look up a film synopsis. I’m sorry! One thing you should know about me is I am the biggest, BIGGEST baby when it comes to horror movies but weirdly I love horror games. Outlast, Resident Evil, Bioshock. I absolutely love playing them, even though I get scared. But watching them? Forget it I’m OUT. With that being said, lets look up the synopsis of The Omen shall we? To quote Wikipedia:

The film's plot follows Damien Thorn, a young child replaced at birth by his father, unbeknownst to his wife, after their biological child dies shortly after birth. As a series of mysterious events and violent deaths occur around the family and Damien enters childhood, they come to learn he is in fact the prophesied Antichrist.

Already we can see similarities between The Omen and Good Omens. Except, in Good Omens, the accidental baby swap includes no baby death. I can imagine that would be a bit of a downer in a comedy. Instead the antichrist goes to a normal English family (unbeknowns to both the angels and demons) who names him Adam of all things, and a perfectly normal child goes to the American diplomats based on the parents from the Omen.

Also after the birth, in both Good Omens and The Omen, once the antichrist is born, the hospital is set on fire. Except in the Omen it’s all scary and horrific, but in Good Omens it’s an eye rolling moment about the ridiculous pryomania of Hastur the duke of hell.

I want to point out that whilst The Omen is supposed to be serious and scary and even though it was a huge commercial success, a lot of the reviewers at the time called it “silly” and “ridiculous” and some even called it “a comedy” so yeah…that’s an interesting comparison. Intentionally funny vs actually funny both ends up with laughter after all. Though I suppose the creators of the The Omen wouldn’t really like that comparison.

Humanity is Silly

So there you have it, two major influences of the book. The literal end of the Bible and a scary movie about a creepy demon child. Neither of these are what I would like to call “cozy” or “funny” despite what the critics say. Remember. Giant baby. Me. But there’s another influence we need to discuss, and those are the films based on the Book of Revelation. There are SO MANY, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century. According to Adapting Revelation: Good Omens as Comic Corrective by Amy Lea Clemons, Good Omens is also a response and a critique to those movies, which focused heavily on that of the human suffering of the “non believers” and the spectacle and horror mentioned in the Book of Revelations.

Instead, by reframing the literal end of the world in a comedic, satirical way, it makes it all seem that the apocalypse is just a huge spectacle and more than a little ridiculous, see the aforementioned sushi vengeance quote for reference. By the way ridiculous is a word you ought to get used to from here on out! Lets focus in on humanity in that regard. The book doesn’t shy away from the fact that humans are absolutely awful to each other either. For example when the demon Crowley learns about the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and decides to get drunk for a week, or this particularly poignant passage from Adam, our antichrist:

It's like you said the other day," said Adam. "You grow up readin' about pirates and cowboys and spacemen and stuff, and jus' when you think the world's full of amazin' things, they tell you it's really all dead whales and chopped-down forests and nucular waste hangin' about for millions of years. 'Snot worth growin' up for, if you ask my opinion.

I mean you know humanity is a bit rubbish when Crowley has the opinion that there’s nothing hell could come up with than can be worse than what we come up with ourselves. We are, apparently, experts about making our lives harder, as this passage points out:

Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more then Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

And this right here is the comforting part! That inside all human minds is both grace and evil. Isn’t that nice? Because, in my opinion, it means humans have the choice. It’s not up to fate or any “great plan”, we as humans have the ability to choose to do good or evil. There’s a neutrality there which then ties into the idea of nature vs nurture. Adam is the antichrist, in his nature, he’s supposed to be Damien from the Omen, a being who grows up to be pure evil, to be Satans representative. But because he was raised by a normal family, neither truly good nor evil, he eventually rejects the extremes of his nature when he speaks to the Metatron:

I don't see what's so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin' upset cos' they act like people", said Adam severely. "Anyway, if you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.

Adam’s rejection of the philosophy behind the Revelation leads to him deciding to stop it from happening full stop. Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but the reason I find this so comforting is because Adam is a child. He’s a brilliant written child character, written with all the frustration, wonder, disillusionment and endless questioning that comes from being his age. But his frustrations, his questioning of authority, is on a much grander scale because you know-antichrist son of satan sent to end the world and all that jazz. For me the comforting part of this is that it’s a reminder that, no matter what happens, children will be children. It’s an optimistic view on humanity. Children will always question adults, always want to make the world fairer and more just. There are always going to be children to ask me why we’re learning Maths and nodding wisely when I say “so you know if that special offer in Sainsbury’s really is a special offer or if they’re doing marketing maths to trick you.” I don’t know, I think it’s sweet. The kids are all right.

A less dramatic but no less funny example of nature vs nurture is in Adam’s hellhound, whom I’m actually going to call a heckhound and you’ll see why in a second. Adam’s dog was supposed to be this great big scary beast, but because Adam is normal and just wanted an ordinary dog, the hellhound became a little mutt. Hence, a heckhound. As the story progresses he becomes more and more doglike, chasing cats and rolling around in muck and not wanting to go back hell at all.

But more than the idea of humans making good or bad choices and making their lives harder, or through nature VS nurture, I think the way the book emphasises its optimism towards humanity is through its ridiculousness. Unlike the John dude who wrote the revelations, Good Omens doesn’t say that humanity deserves to be saved because its good or even if they’re Christian, but rather humans deserve to be saved because they’re silly. The beautiful contradictions and silliness of people is a HUGE plot point in the novel, mentioned and alluded to many times. Humans are exactly that, human, both good and bad, brilliant and terrible, and more importantly, SILLY despite how serious we all take ourselves. Think about the utter ridiculousness of minor character Seagent Shadwells Witchfinder Army and how he takes his beliefs in witchfinding and witchcraft completely seriously despite the fact they make no sense in the modern era. 

Speaking of the Witchfinder Army, I think this quote about them sums this silliness point perfectly:

NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:

Two farthings = One Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and one Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.

The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.

So silliness and brilliance in equal measure. It’s the main reason why, after six thousand years, Aziraphale and Crowley, are so enamoured with Earth and desperately want to prevent the end of it from occurring.

Ah and now we come to the most important reason, at least in my opinion, why this comedy with a super serious subject matter ends up feeling so comforting. The true heart of the novel.

Aziraphale and Crowley

I couldn’t, in good conscious, do this podcast without mentioning the factor that gives me the coziest feeling in the whole novel. And that is the angel and demon, Aziraphale and Crowley. Firstly I’ll talk about them as separate characters before discussing why they’re such an endearing duo and, in my opinion, the reason why this book has continued to pick up fans over the years.

Aziraphale is an fussy angel who truly believes in the goodness of heaven, even if he can be a bit stuck up about it at times. He’s delighted by humanity, always trying to help them, for example getting a bit carried away in fixing a bike Crowley busted when he accidentally ran it (and its owner- the aforementioned descendent of the true prophet) over. Speaking of the sushi, Aziraphale loves it along with other food too. He owns a bookshop but he’s more of a collector of books than anything and refuses to sell them most of the time. The fan favourite quote about him is: "[m]any people, upon meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three assumptions: he was British, he was intelligent, and he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide." Which is an assumption he owns, since he refers to himself as “not just any southern pansy, THE southern pansy.” Which, for those of you that don’t know, is old English slang meaning a “posh homosexual.” Aziraphale seems perpetually stuck in the 19th century and uses terms like “my dear boy” when talking to Crowley. It’s all very sweet and endearing. In the book he blushes and gets flustered easily too.

The thing that endears the fussy angel to myself and so many readers, beyond being proud of his Southern Pansy status, is the fact that he is the humans champion. He wants to stop Armageddon from happening because he sees all the beauty that humans create. But more than that, he’s been a sort of protector of humanity from the start. He gave his flaming sword away, the flaming sword given to him by god, and then proceeded to LIE about it TO god by saying he’d misplaced it. The reason? Because he feels bad about Adam and Eve being kicked out of the garden of Eden, especially as Eve is already pregnant, and he wants them to have something with which to protect themselves. That…is….so….CUTE I can’t stand it. He just wants to do good in the world, and it’s only when other angels refuse to back down from the war between heaven and hell, despite all Aziraphale’s best efforts to stop to war that he decides to go rouge. You can’t help but love him, even at his snarkiest.

They you have his demon companion, Crowley. Crowley was the snake who tempted Eve with the apple and he still has some sort of snakey-features about him, but in a way that’s more weird or cute than scary. Crowley, despite being a demon, refers to himself as an optimist. He’s awkward yet mischievous, and despite being a demon he’s never seen doing truly evil acts. He’s not an angel who fell as much as he sauntered vaguely downwards. Though speaking as a Londoner, I can never quite forgive him for creating the monstrosity that is the M25 motorway. No Crowley’s acts of devilry are more annoying humans than anything. Where Aziraphale is stuck in the 19th Century, Crowley likes thriving in the modern era, so his evil acts represent that. Where other demons are still tempting priests, Crowley ties up phone lines and turns a game of paintball into one with actual guns- but he makes it so everyone shot has miraculous escapes. He gets upset and flustered whenever Aziraphale points out he’s doing something nice, but he’ll keep doing good things. Of the two of them Crowley gets the most upset when humans do abborhant things.

The thing about Crowley is that, though he’s supposed to be a little bit scary and he acts like he’s oh-so-cool with his modern apartment and his snazzy, beloved Bentley, Crowley is an anxious little noodle and awkward a lot of the time. So much of his dialogue is mumbled phrases like “ngk” “heigh-ho” and “ngh.” He admits to himself when he’s lonely or frightened, and even when against all odds, even when Aziraphale is missing presumed gone, he still does his best to try and stop the apocalypse all on his own.

Now separately these are two characters easy to fall in love with true, but it’s when you put them together that their magic really shines through. When they’re together, they have undeniable chemistry. They’re both such idiots in the best way, getting drunk and spouting philosophical nonsense. They argue and bicker like an old married couple, but they also tease each other playfully too, after Aziraphale gets overzealous with fixing a bike, Crowley teases him by saying  “Oh lord heal this bike” and Aziraphale gets embarrassed and admits he’s getting carried away. Crowley calls him “angel” and Aziraphale “my dear boy” or “wiley old serpent” but these come across as more terms of endearment than anything.

Other characters in the book also think that they’re a couple. Anathema, once she’s driven home by the two of them, when Crowley calls Aziraphale angel in front of him, she realises she “had been perfectly safe after all” implying that she wasn’t worried about these two strange (what she thinks are) men anymore because she assumes they’re a couple.

The best thing about them is they’re both a bit pathetic too if I’m going to be honest. They’re both deliberately mediocre at their job. Crowley tries to run over a hedgehog and misses, Aziraphale accidentally discorporates himself, they’re both just a bit rubbish at their job, and both of them love humanity as well as each other.

I would be an absolute CHARLATAN if I wasn’t honest in saying that I ship them hard guys. Ineffable Husbands is one of my OTPs. Together they somehow bring out the best and worst in each other, they hold hands at the end of the world when all seems lost, and end up complimenting each other. They have an affection for ducks and like to feed them, and have had dinner dates together. Listen. LISTEN. Is there anything more cute than 6000 years of pining? And this is just in the book, let alone the TV show, where their depiction by Michael Sheen and David Tennant turn me absolutely feral.

When writing the book Neil and Terry (sorry SIR Terry) didn’t originally intend for them to be written as a couple per say, but neither of them rejected the idea either. Moving into the TV show however, the two are clearly written romantically. Judging by the fact that there’s about 46,000 fanfictions on AO3 based on the two of them being a couple, I would say many people are happy with this. Myself included. Especially as we’ve gone into season 2, the natural love and casual representation not just with Aziraphale and Crowley, but with the side characters such as Nina and Maggie, and the non-binery rep from the sweet Muriel and amazing Beelzebub, makes it both cozy and comforting.

So yes, I’m a silly lil person with my silly lil ship and I love my silly lil blorbos. Forgive me or not, but my point is that wonderful characters, non-judgemental outlook on humanity and endlessly witty humour make this book about the apolocalypse one of the coziest apocalypses in media today.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Greeks and Geeks. The question this week (which you can answer on spotify or @ me on twitter @GreeksGeeksPod) is “How would you react to seeing fish raining from the sky?” Next Tuesday, we’re going to deep dive into the Circe mythos. I thought you should actually know that I’ve never had so many google chrome tabs open in my life for this one, I even emailed a Greek Mythology professor (who emailed me back and everything). It’s by far the longest I’ve spent on a script to date so I hope you enjoy it! In the meantime you can follow me on Twitter or X or whatever @GreeksGeeksPod and on tiktok @sabrinasalisburywriter. If you like the show, please don’t forget to rate it

I’ve been your host Sabrina and I’m Geeking Out! See ya next time!

And no I’m still not able to spell apocalypse.