Posted in: Amazon Studios, BBC, Current News, Good Omens, streaming, TV | Tagged: armando iannucci, good omens, Good Omens 2, John Finnemore, neil gaiman, sir terry pratchett

Where John Finnemore & Neil Gaiman's Good Omens 2 Love Affair Began

Is this where John Finnemore and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens 2 love affair got its start? Let's go ahead & take a look, shall we?

Good Omens Season 2 is written by Neil Gaiman and John Finnemore. Everyone knows who Neil Gaiman is. Not quite as many people know who John Finnemore, but is he is probably the reason that I am even more excited for Season Two than I was the first. And I was very, very excited for that. There is lots of fanfic written about love affairs between Aziraphale and Crowley, but I seem to just be shipping Gaiman and Finnemore.

Let's go back a bit. John Finnemore has spent a couple of decades writing some of the best British comedy shows, mostly for radio. Starting his career writing for the Mitchell and Webb team, he successfully landed a couple of shows on BBC Radio 4. The sitcom Cabin Pressure, which also had the good fortune to star Benedict Cumberbatch alongside Finnemore, ran for four-and-a-bit seasons and became lauded as the best sitcom no one had heard about. While his sketch show John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme gained a reputation as the best sketch show that even fewer people had heard of. They won all the awards going, and John Finnemore became one of the industry's favourite writers. And so he started to pop up in places.

That included the recent Armando Iannucci sci-fi TV show for HBO Avenue 5, which he also wrote for the second season as well as appearing in. And working on Armando Iannucci's new unnamed film project.

Then there were the Neil Gaiman appearances, and it was a love-in. Talking of one Radio 4 travel show, Neil tweeted back in 2016, "Now @SusanCalman will lull me to sleep, although she does not know it. G'night world. Hullo Susan & @JohnFinnemore" and in 2017 "The Wolverine sketch (and three subsequent bits) that begins this John Finnemore Souvenir Programme needs love…" Bleeding Cool liked it a lot as well.

But in 2018, Neil Gaiman made the love affair official with With Great Pleasure at Christmas: Neil Gaiman on BBC Radio 4, with himself and guests reading out some of Neil Gaiman's favourite writing, Peter Capaldi, Nina Sosanya, Mitch Benn and John Finnemore. Gaiman tweeted, "Watching @JohnFinnemore discover the speed at which the Milne play narration needed to be delivered in order for it to achieve Maximum Funny was a real delight." And in 2020, added, "My love for Mr John Finnemore is boundless. If you watch this video Christmas card which he sings, yours will probably be too."

So the scene was set. And so in April 2021, John Finnemore posted a photo of two gravestones in a graveyard that appeared to be leaning on one another, saying, "Passed these gravestones today, and shuddered to myself to think of the truly terrible poem I would have written if I'd seen them when I was seventeen…" Musician Alexander Kenneth Martin Douglas replied saying, "There's something @neilhimself esque about this image." John Finnemore replied again, saying "Yes, I've often felt rather as if I were living in his world over this past year", to which Neil Gaiman (for it is he) replied, "Um."

We now know that's because (clearly) John Finnemore had already started writing Good Omens with Neil Gaiman, based on the book by Gaiman and the late Sir Terry Pratchett, following the first season. And indeed, had been doing so since 2020. And we are about to see the fruits of their labours together on Amazon Prime Video with Good Omens Season 2 launching on the 28th of July. You have until then to prepare. Well, since you asked me for a rabbit hole to go down for all things Finnemore…

All ten seasons of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme are available on BBC Sounds, which starts Episode 1 with a Doctor Who sketch, but season nine remains one of my favourite things he has ever done (and also seems to be Neil Gaiman's favourite as well), and I wrote about it with all the possible spoilers over here. You can buy the CDs of Cabin Pressure, but it's also on Audible. As are John Finnemore's Double Acts, two series of six one-act plays with two actors in each. Sometimes one of them is him. And he manages to get the likes of Michael Palin, Martin Clunes, Una Stubbs, Stephanie Cole, Julia McKenzie, Celia Imrie, Matthew Bayton, Rebecca Front, Alison Steadman and more.

John Finnemore has won more Comedy.co.uk Awards than any other writer, the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Outstanding Contribution to Writing in 2020, and plenty of BBC Audio Drama Awards. Radio Academy Awards and Chortle Awards too. And now? Now, three years after he started, it's Good Omens 2 time… no pressure, John, no pressure. But I do want to see Armando fight Neil over you… or maybe as a result of Good Omens 2, the whole world will love him as well?

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