I saw good omens trending and i panicked because i thought “omg has the trailer been released?? Did neil gaiman allude to something that might happen in season 2?”. But no, it’s just the regular obsession over the show.
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman started planning sequel to the book in 1989 - even before it has been published. But because they careers took off and they had an ocean in the between them, it was never realized it in the 90s. In 2005 they made another plans to write in a year or so but in 2007 Terry was diagnosed with Alzheimer so again the the plans did not come into fruition.
Neil is taking what he planned with Terry and is co-writing the second season of the show with John Finnemore, a british comedy writer and actor.
How long has it been in the making:
Neil said that they stared planning it three (!!!) years ago. That means in 2018, a year before the first season came out.
Cast and crew:
The casting begun 15 months ago (!) - so in March 2020 but it still seems to be in progress - with Suzanne Smith as the casting director :).
Writing: Neil Gaiman and co-writer John Finnemore.
Showrunners: Neil Gaiman and Douglas Mackinnon (who directed and executive produced the first season) are going to co-showrun.
Executive producers: Neil Gaiman, Douglas Mackinnon, Rob Wilkins, John Finnemore and Josh Cole (BBC Studios Productions’ Head of Comedy).
Music: David G. Arnold, the music composer for S1 is returning.
Actors: The only actors confirmed so far have been David Tennant and Michael Sheen.
Production: BBC Studios Productions, Amazon Studios, Narrativia and The Blank Corporation
When and where does the filming takes place:
The filming will begin later this year. The entire second season will be shot in Scotland.
The plot:
From Neil’s blog: There are so many questions people have asked about what happened next (and also, what happened before) to our favourite Angel and Demon. Here are, perhaps, some of the answers you’ve been hoping for. As Good Omens continues, we will be back in Soho, and all through time and space, solving a mystery which starts with one of the angels wandering through a Soho street market with no memory of who they might be, on their way to Aziraphale’s bookshop. (Although our story actually begins about five minutes before anyone had got around to saying “Let there be Light”.)
From Neil’s instagram: Game on! There are mysteries, histories, secrets revealed and Something Too Terrible To Be Revealed on the way. Also a cardboard box.
From the BBC website: The new season will explore storylines that go beyond the original source material to illuminate the uncanny friendship between Aziraphale, a fussy angel and rare book dealer, and the fast-living demon Crowley. Having been on Earth since The Beginning and with the Apocalypse thwarted, Aziraphale and Crowley are getting back to easy living amongst mortals in London’s Soho when an unexpected messenger presents a surprising mystery.
Not much info yet, but it seems that after the Flop-Apocalypse Crowley and Aziraphale are back to their nice life amongst the mortals when an amnesiac angel appears in Soho. There will be mysteries and we will again visit the past - even before ‘Let there be Light’ (fingers crossed for more Aziraphale and Crowley through history and the angel Crowley :))). There will also be something called ‘Something Too Terrible To Be Revealed’ which sounds very ominous and also a cardboard box is important.
Also, the unwritten sequel was supposed to be called ‘668: The Neighbour of the Beast’ and after the end the boys were supposed to share a cottage in South Downs :).
Eight Rules For Writing – from a long ago piece I wrote for The Guardian.
1 Write.
2 Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
3 Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
4 Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
5 Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
6 Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
7 Laugh at your own jokes.
8 The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
Douglas: Now tell us about - are you going to tell us the story about you and Terry…
Neil: Yes, I will.
Douglas: I think that’s important one.
Neil: I was gonna say our location is a Chinese restaurant we’d had turned into a sushi restaurant. So Terry and I, Terry Pratchett and I, had a standing… not even a standing joke, just a standing plan, that we were going to have sushi - there was going to be a scene in Good Omens where sushi was eaten and we were gonna be extras, we were gonna sit in the background, eating sushi while it was done. And I was so looking forward to this and, so I wrote this scene with it being sushi, even though Terry was gone, with that in mind and I thought: Oh, I’ll sit and I’ll eat lots of sushi as an extra, this will be my scene as an extra, I’ll just be in the background. And then, on the day, or a couple of days before, I realized that I couldn’t do it.
Douglas: You never told me this before either. I might have pushed you into doing it, had I known. I think you were right not to tell me.
Neil: I was keeping it to me self ‘cause I was always like: Oh, maybe I’ll be… this will be my cameo. And then I couldn’t. I was just so sad, ‘cause Terry wasn’t there. And it was probably the day that I missed Terry the most of all of the filming - it was just this one scene ‘cause it was written for Terry and all of the sushi meals we’d ever had and all of the strange way that sushi ran through Good Omens.
We’re only two weeks away from Prime releasing Good Omens! Probably my most anticipated Story-to-Screen translation - though we’ve really been spoiled for choice these last few years, haven’t we? American Gods, Preacher, Happy, Umbrella Academy, Locke and Key, Nos4atu… my god, Brave New World! it’s a golden age of adaptation and I for one couldn’t be happier.
It’sNational Library Week, and today is National Library Workers Day! Here’s our buddy Neil Gaiman to tell you why libraries are important: “Libraries are about Freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.”
He also said: “It’s still National Library Week. You should be especially nice to a librarian today, or tomorrow. Sometime this week, anyway. Probably the librarians would like tea. Or chocolates. Or a reliable source of funding.”
Chocolate is always an acceptable offering. Just sayin’.
