The world has been threatening a Good Omens adaptation for years now, for film and television both. (Neil Gaiman himself actually wrote a screenplay a long while back, which is fascinating if you ever come across it….) The rumor mill has started up again, and it looks like we might get a TV version from the BBC. Now, I’m a little nervous on that account because the sort of humor found in a book like this doesn’t always translate well to screen, but I’m willing to play the game: Who gets to be Crowley and Aziraphale?
Up front: I made an attempt to pick people who I thought might actually be interested in the playing the roles. I know that fans of the book have cried out names like Kenneth Brannagh for Aziraphale and Johnny Depp for Crowley in the past, but I don’t think there’s much chance of that. (Also, much as I love Depp, I’d rather he stayed away from Crowley.) So I’m going to go with some names that maybe haven’t been tossed into the ring yet. Everyone is from the UK, since it’s unlikely that they would be casting Americans for a BBC production. A couple picks will be wishful thinking. We’re allowed to dream.
So let’s start with…
Aziraphale — Our stuffy, prim Principality who tries his best not to sell books from his shop in Soho. Collector of rare Bibles and gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Well, he appears to be, anyway. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got:
Mark Gatiss
Mark Gatiss is about as posh and prim as you can get, and hilarious to boot. There are some in the Good Omens fandom who would prefer an ultra-young pretty boy for Aziraphale, but I think we should be going in the opposite direction; he and Crowley are essentially opposites, after all. Funny enough, there are some BBC Sherlock fans who have asserted an alternate universe where Sherlock and Mycroft secretly are Crowley and Aziraphale… and that makes a frightening amount of sense. (There’s fanfic. Check “Good Omens/Sherlock crossover”. It’s sort of brilliant.) Just imagine Mycroft, drunk and with terrible fashion sense, sneering at potential customers in a dusty, tiny book shop. It would be glorious.
Shaun Parkes
Shaun Parkes brings a wonderful combination of play and gravity to every role I’ve seen him in. (Except Izzy in The Mummy Returns, but we’ll talk about that movie’s issues some other time.) There’s a lot of fun to be had with Aziraphale, but you have to be able to pull back from that and really lay out that he’s an angel. In touch with God, believer in the ineffable. Shaun Parkes would take out that book, bell, and candle and you would know things were serious. Also, he’s great at epic friendships (see: Casanova).
Russell Tovey
He’s a bit young for my tastes in this role, but Russell Tovey can go from weeping to ridiculous with no questions asked. He’s also unforgettably endearing, which might be a good element to bring to Aziraphale’s character. Being angelic is distancing enough—give the audience something they can latch onto. It’s easy to imagine him with all of those unfortunate angelic manners, confusing everyone with a smile that’s actually masking his irritation. And he’s got that sniffy temper down pat. He’d be plain adorable.
Peter Davison
I’m not going to lie… Davison might take my top place in these picks. Can you think of anything that makes more sense than the Fifth Doctor playing this part? The confusion, the ineffective sternness, the Frowny Face? Davison has everything required. He’s also plenty experienced at the desperate chase and running around in a tizzy, considering that he had more companions to keep track of than any Doctor before or since his tenure. And then there’s Aziraphale’s unfortunate love of ye olde magician tricks. I’d love to watch Davison put on a terrible magic show for a bunch of bratty children.
Simon Pegg
It’s not likely Pegg would do this at the current rate he’s going, so this is a dream pick. More than anything, it would just be amazing to see what he’d do with the role. I imagine that his Aziraphale would be some weird combo of Tim from Spaced and Hot Fuzz‘s Nicholas Angel for that blind sense of duty. He’d be giggly and adorable in the famed drunk scene, and I’d love to hear him utter the words, “Tartan is stylish.” The look on his face once they reached the potential sight of Armageddon would be worth it all by itself.
And now for…
Crowley — A dark-haired demon with great cheekbones. Snakeskin boots (that might not be boots). Garden of Eden’s very own tempting serpent. Abuses his houseplants and owns a 1926 Bentley that he loves more than anything on Earth. Here are a few choices:
Colin Morgan
Sure, he’s young, but Crowley is likely to be on the young side anyhow. Colin Morgan has the cheekbones, the hair and, more importantly, the acting chops to pull the role off. He’s great with comedy and would know exactly what to do with those scenes where Crowley’s superiors in Hell tried to intimidate him. With the work he’s done on Merlin, this would be one heck of a fun follow up. Give him a role that’s iconic, but outside the family television umbrella. We already know he’s great at being something of a punk (Remember Jethro on the Doctor Who episode “Midnight”?), which Crowley definitely is, no matter how fancy his suits and car happen to be.
Damien Molony
After watching him on the latest season of Being Human, I’m hooked. Molony is just superb, and would bring a vulnerability to Crowley that would make him more than some smooth, cool agent of Hell. We already know he’s capable of bringing a lot of age to a role, despite how young he is, and that would make Crowley more real to us. A being who has been around since before the Earth was created. His Crowley would probably be calm and collected for the majority and then whip out weirdness at the most unexpected points. Yes.
Aidan Turner
Okay, another vampire from Being Human. It’s not my fault that the prerequisite for playing a vampire is also dark hair and cheekbones that won’t quit. Maybe Aidan Turner will be off to different pastures after The Hobbit, but if he comes back for a bit, he would be unbelievable in this part. The way that Turner handles humor is simply effortless, and it would make some of the absurdity of the Good Omens universe seem like the most natural thing in the world. He’s also great with giving us lovable characters who have tricky, sharp edges to them. Mitchell’s relationship to Herrick on Being Human is incredibly similar to the one that Crowley has with Hell, and Aidan Turner would make you feel for the demon in those moments.
Tobias Menzies
Drama is more Menzies’ suit, but he does it brilliantly. Anyone who saw him play Brutus in Rome knows it. He’s got a great look for Crowley and he strikes as the sort of man who could do any part he put his mind to. And he’s actually damn funny in Casino Royale as M’s put-upon assistant, so let’s see what else he can pull out of the hat! He could probably rock those snake eyes that Crowley flashes whenever the sunglasses are off.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Obviously the dream pick here. Cumberbatch is off in the greenest of green pastures, and I doubt he’ll be doing television outside of Sherlock anymore, if he can help it. Now, apparently Terry Pratchett has said that he wants Cumberbatch to play Aziraphale, but I honestly think he’d make a much better Crowley. As I said before, it has been noted that Sherlock and Mycroft have certain elements in common with the angel-demon duo, but I’d be happy to see him play the demon opposite any of the actors above. He’s already playing a dragon in The Hobbit, so being snakelike should be no problem. And he’s played so many dramatic roles lately, I’d love to see him try something funnier. He would gracefully balance Crowley’s rage with that irrepressable urge to do Bruce Lee impressions in his spotless apartment. I need to see this.
So, who did I leave off? Who wants Daniel Craig to play Aziraphale? (Someone’s gonna get upset about the lack of Freeman, McAvoy, and Fassbender, I can tell.) Who are your dream picks? Discuss!
Emmet Asher-Perrin already has plans to be Aziraphale for Hallowe’en this year. It’s gonna be apocalyptic. You can bug her on Twitter and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
As they say, the golden age of SF was fourteen, and this is pretty much what I read at the time. It’s so long ago now, but I think that Chronicles was my gateway series to fantasy… probably alongside Eddings as well I think.
And gods was Rose of the Prophet something…to me, that was certainly their best series. Death Gate just went weird at the end, and Darksword was angst-y to the extreme. Rose of the Prophet however had some interesting world-building, and actually had diverse protagonists. As a teenager in Malaysia, there was only so much reading about various eurocentric characters (even in a world with dragons!) that I could take.
I find it oddly fitting that the killing of characters is what made their books good.
For those who don’t know, GEN CON every year. the Hickmans host the Killer breakfast. The ultimate goal is to have fun, and kill everyone who apears on stage over the course of 2 hours (easily 100 people). They play GM’s gone wild, and everyone elses goal is to survive a round or two with all the hilarious events happeneing around them. The event has becoe a staple at Gen Con and i hope it remains so for years to come.
As a kid in small town america, finding the Dragonlance novels for sale at my local library was a great moment, I read the first copies I had till the pages fell out
There’s a bittersweetness to knowing that my experience of discovering the Dragonlance Chronicles as a young kid, and it helping to launch me into reading, gaming, then fiction writing and game writing professionally. So yeah, I’m with you. I was fond of Sturm from the start, but I will agree that his arch was exactly as long as it needed to be.
Essentially, Dragonlance was my Harry Potter.
This was also my gateway series to fantasy. Sturm’s death was definitely a great one, but it didn’t affect me nearly as much as Flint’s death, which made me cry.
@@.-@,
Essentially, Dragonlance was my Harry Potter.
Hear hear.
I enjoyed the Death Gate cycle for Zifnab alone. If ever a character deserved to NOT be confined to a single trilogy.
And Sturm’s death, while I wasn’t a fan of his character(on a recent reread he REALLY bugged me), really hit me profoundly. At this point in my reading, never had a major character DIED like that. At the hands of another major character, no less. It really raised the stakes of the story.
A couple of interesting tidbits, from a behind the scenes book the friend who introduced me to these books had.
-Sturm was slated for death from the start.
-The effort to conceal the identity of the Blue Dragonlord was so in depth, they put a man’s figure on the cover of the first edition.
I loved loved loved Star of the Guardians. So what if it was a Star Wars ripoff? It was a better Star Wars ripoff that any Star Wars book I tried. And it became something more in the end, with two of the most memorable characters I’d ever read. And yeah, they died, most magnificently.
I reread the original trilogy recently (first time in many years) and the nostalgia, it runs strong although I certainly can see the imperfections. I’ll have to dive into Legends in the not-too-distant future.
I did like the first four Death Gate books, at least — after that it started to get a bit weird. And I actually like Starshield — the idea, if not the execution.
It’s amazing how fast it took off — I remember in the early 1990s going into bookstores and seeing an entire rack of nothing but Dragonlance.
Gah! Double post! OK, so I’ll change it to say: I remember when it all first began — there was Gary Gygax’ Saga of Old City, Douglas Niles’ Darkwalker on Moonshae and Weis & Hickman’s Dragons of Autumn Twilight (not necessarily in that order). Three surprisingly different takes on RPG tie-in fiction.
It’s great to see a post giving some love to Weis and Hickman. I often see their names associated with hack-fantasy. I think they deserve much more credit than that.
I wish someone would give some similiar love to R. A. Salvatore. I think his fantasy writing is really good, especially his description of battle scenes.