Jon Hamm to play archangel Gabriel in Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Jon Hamm has signed on to play the archangel Gabriel in Good Omens, the Amazon / BBC mini-series based on the novel Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, which was written by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett. Readers familiar with the book will know that Gabriel only had a "fleeting role" in its pages, but that won't be the case with the mini-series. While writing the mini-series, Gaiman expanded the role of angels in the story, and this move goes back to ideas that he and Pratchett had for a sequel or a feature film adaptation, neither of which ever happened.

The story of Good Omens takes place 

in 2018 when the Apocalypse is near and Final Judgment is set to descend upon humanity. According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, and tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming war. And… someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.

Hamm, always a good addition to a cast as far as I'm concerned, here joins a cast that already includes David Tennant as Crowley, Michael Sheen as Aziraphale, Adria Arjona as occultist Anathema Device, Nina Sosanya as Sister Mary Loquacious of the Chattering Order of St Beryl; Ned Dennehy as Duke of Hell Hastur; Ariyon Bakare as Duke of Hell Ligur; Jack Whitehall as witch hunter Pulsifer, a.k.a. Newt; Miranda Richardson as psychic medium / courtesan Madame Tracy; and Michael McKean as Sgt. Shadwell, the leader of the witch-finder army.

Gaiman had this to say about Gabriel's expanded role in the mini-series: 

Once we had finished writing Good Omens, back in the dawn of prehistory, Terry Pratchett and I started plotting a sequel. There would have been a lot of angels in the sequel. When Good Omens was first published and was snapped up for the first time by Hollywood, Terry and I took joy in introducing our angels into the plot of a movie that was never made. So when, almost thirty years later, I started writing Good Omens for TV, one thing I knew was that our angels would have to be in there. 
 
The leader of these angels is Gabriel. He is everything that Aziraphale isn't: he's tall, good-looking, charismatic and impeccably dressed. We were fortunate that Jon Hamm was available, given that he is already all of these things without even having to act. We were even more fortunate that he's a fan of the books and a remarkable actor."

The mini-series will consist of six hour-long episodes and will premiere on Amazon Prime Video. The episodes will then air on the BBC.