Good Omens

Appealingly daffy and strange, this imaginative fantasy makes the End Times feel like a whole lot of fun. Tennant and Sheen have a marvelously crackling chemistry that makes it easy to picture the two alternately bickering and grudgingly helping each other out since the Dawn of Time -- which we get to witness in this epic show, along with Noah and his Ark, the French Revolution, and Jesus' crucifixion in the sweeping plot. Heady stuff, but it's all grounded in the uneasy lived-in friendship between Aziraphale and Crowley, who lovably bicker their way through Biblical legends.

The visuals are prime too, like a gorgeous sequence in which a mixup between three newborn babies at a satanic convent is illustrated by a set of celestial hands playing three-card monte. As the convent's nuns dash from room to room conveying the babies to and fro in a farce so goofy it might as well be scored with "Yakety Sax," we understand what Good Omens is really about: the heaviest of topics, given the silliest treatment. Fans of science fiction humor like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (books and movies) are particularly urged to give this one a look -- it has what you need.