'Good Omens' hits all the right notes in its second season

In its second season, 'Good Omens' reunites David Tennant and Michael Sheen as the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale (or Fell, for short) in London after having saved existence from the end of the world in the first season. This time around? Human existence is about to end yet again, this time because, well, humans just aren't really helping themselves. There's an icily sharp joke made by David Tennant to his new boss, played with sinister glee by Miranda Richardson, that points out much of the show's humour. Essentially, no matter what evil Crowley can come up with, humanity just seems to outdo him.

The new season has a smaller cast of characters and cameos, more than likely owing to the fact that it was filmed during the pandemic and roping in passing actors might have proven difficult and probably illegal. There are still familiar faces from the first season. Jon Hamm is back as Gabriel, although this time he plays him like a lost child as the archangel has had his mind wiped for dark and dastardly reasons. Frances McDormand crops up as the voice of God, and there's also Miranda Richardson now recast as Shax, the new ambassador to Earth from Hell. Yet, first and foremost, both David Tennant and Michael Sheen are back in action and absolutely loving every minute of it.

Their comedic dynamic is perfectly pitched - Sheen is the fussy but kindhearted one, Tennant the rock star swagger in blacks and reds with a sliver of gold beneath it - but it never once feels like it's strained or forced. If anything, you get the sense that they should have been working together as a comedy duo for years and we all just somehow missed it. It's a kind of pairing along the lines of Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson in 'Blackadder', or the late great Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in 'Bottom', where it just jumps out of the screen in a completely natural way.

Much of the season, as with a lot of Pratchett and Gaiman's work, concerns the end of the world, the interplay between science and mysticism, and comedy and horror. There's also a wonderful little rom-com playing beneath the surface between Maggie Service and Nina Sosanya's characters, and a cracking episode spent in Edinburgh with David Tennant harking his Scottish accent with his whole chest. In fact, much of the comedy in 'Good Omens' comes from the little asides and off-the-cuff remarks between Tennant and Sheen. They're the kind of witty rejoinders that only have the kind of fluidity to make them work when there's that strong a dynamic between tow performers.

As mentioned earlier, the story of the second season of 'Good Omens' is something of a rehash of the first one - although that's nominally a recurring joke in both Terry Pratchett's work and Gaiman's work too, for that matter. Humanity is constantly in peril, often at its own hand or by its own daft delusions of grandeur. At just six episodes for this second season, 'Good Omens' crafts an enjoyably familiar story without ever overstaying its welcome - not that it really could with such a sharp comedic ensemble cast.