Review: Amazons Good Omens is very bit as entertaining as original novel.

Heaven and Hell prepare to face off in the long-planned battle of Armageddon, but an angel, a demon, and a rebellious Antichrist aren't quite as enthusiastic about the prospect in Good Omens. The six-part limited series is based on the original 1990 novel by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett, and it's every bit as entertaining as the source material.

(Some spoilers for the book and series below.)

Confession: I am an uber-fan, having read the book multiple times over the last 19 years. I'll likely read it several more times before I kick off this mortal coil, so I'm very much in the target audience for the series. Good Omens is the story of an angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and a demon Crowley (David Tennant) who gradually become friends over the millennia and team up to avert Armageddon. They've come to be rather fond of the Earth and all its humans with their many foibles, you see—not to mention the perks that come with it, like sleek electronics and quaint little restaurants where they know you. The supernatural pair doesn't really want the Antichrist—an 11-year-old boy named Adam (Sam Taylor Buck) who has grown up unaware of his pivotal role in the coming apocalypse—to bring an end to all of that.

I suspect Gaiman loves the book as much, if not more, than its most ardent fans, and that love shines through every scene of the adaptation. There's a moment in the book where Anathema Device (descended from a famous witch) tells Newton Pulsifer (descended from a famous witch finder) about the town of lower Tadfield, where the Antichrist is prophesized to rise: "There isn't any evil here. There's just love. Something or someone loves this place. Loves every inch of it so powerfully that it shields and protects it. A deep-down huge, fierce love. How can anything bad start here?"

This is pretty much everything fans could hope for in a TV adaptation.

The same goes for Gaiman's adaptation: it's his deep-down huge, fierce love driving everything, and that is ultimately what makes the series a sheer joy to watch (even though season two of American Gods may have suffered a bit from Gaiman's absence). The series almost slavishly follows the novel in many respects—right down to the soundtrack packed with the music of Queen, because a running gag is that any cassette tape (it was 1990, folks) left in the car for longer than a fortnight automatically turns into the band's Greatest Hits compilation. And that's just fine with me. Apart from a few minor quibbles, this is pretty much everything fans could hope for in a TV adaptation of Good Omens.

Among other strengths, it boasts terrific performances from a truly stellar cast. Tennant and Sheen were inspired choices for the two lead roles; they have incredible onscreen chemistry, and bring those characters to vivid life. Gaiman admitted during a recent panel at SXSW that he was thinking of Tennant as Crowley while writing the script: "I thought, there's no other human who could play Crowley." Similarly, it's hard to imagine a more perfect foil to Tennant's brashly irreverent demon than Sheen's sweetly anxious angel fretting over his divided loyalties.

As for the supporting cast, Jon Hamm is deliciously smarmy as the Archangel Gabriel, the ultimate not-too-bright bureaucrat, who scoffs when Aziraphale tells him there doesn't necessarily have to be a war: "Of course there does. How else would we win it?" Michael McKean plays Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell to perfection opposite an equally well-matched Miranda Richardson, who become mentors of sorts to unlikely lovers Newton (Jack Whitehall) and Anathema (Adria Arjona), keeper of the only accurate book of prophecies ever written.