Mad Men alum Jon Hamm joins Amazon / BBC Two series Good Omens

Jon Hamm

Amazon and BBC Two have announced Emmy and Golden Globe winner Jon Hamm will join the cast of Good Omens. Hamm is set to play archangel Gabriel, the primary messenger of God.

Gabriel has a fleeting role in the novel, but in the television adaptation Neil Gaiman, who write the novel and will write the series, explains that the character is being developed in a different way from the book.

“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.”

Jon Hamm also expressed his excitement about the series and is role as Gabriel.

“I read Good Omens almost twenty years ago.  I thought it was one of the funniest, coolest books I’d ever read. It was also, obviously, unfilmable. Two months ago Neil sent me the scripts, and I knew I had to be in it.”

The series will be a six-part adaptation of the best-selling novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. The series is set to be released in 2019 to over 200 countries by Amazon Prime Video and will be exclusive for Prime Members. The series will also launch in the UK on BBC Two at a later time.

Good Omens is being brought to the small screen by the highly acclaimed director and executive producer Douglas Mackinnon. His credits include KnightfallDirk GentlyDoctor Who, Outlander and the standalone Victorian episode of Sherlock: The Abominable Bride. 

Good Omens is currently in production and we look forward to seeing it sometime is 2019.

For more news related to Good Omens, including its eventually premiere date, be sure to visit this link.

This story was written by Samantha D’Amico. If you want to follow her on Twitter, you can do so at SAM_iamXO. 

Love TV? Be sure to like Matt & Jess on Facebook for more updates!