I first came across the book in 2017, bought it and was immediately hooked by the story.
Years passed, and when they announced the casts for the series, I was skeptical (I’m not a big movie/TV person) as I knew nothing about Michael Sheen and David Tennant.
Decided to give it a try, and boy, it’s so good. Everyone is so perfectly casted.
I’m genuinely worried about II. Not because I don’t think Gaiman can go it alone, but because the original had an unstable insanity to it that will be difficult to continue without being ridiculous for ridiculous’ sake.
I hope it’s good, of course.
I think I’m out of the loop. Did he have a writing partner for the first season but not the second?
The first season is based entirely on the book that’s cowritten with Terry Pratchett. How you feel about the second season that’ll be entirely from him and despite early assurances there won’t be more, depends on how you think he is as a writer. I think he’s matured, but certainly the book was a favourite that counted him as a writer because he had Pratchett to humanize and bring down the stakes to what I consider to be his storytelling tics to be clever and a bit grand.
The second season was co-written with John Finnemore, so I think we’re safe. Finnemore has a similar vibe to Pterry.
tentatively crossing fingers Gaiman has gotten better at breaking a long form story as well, so we’ll see
(that said, despite my issues with the series, for a lot of reasons, it’s probably the best adaptation of a Pratchett story because on the other hand his characters don’t seem to survive transition to visual media, e.g. the Discworld shows)
Oh my goodness. I’ve read that book 3 times but somehow I totally forgot that he wrote it with Pratchett. Embarassing. I really did enjoy the first season, though. I have high hopes for the second.
He actually co-authored the book with the late Terry Prachette. They had plans for a sequel, but that didn’t pan out as PTerry was afflicted by dementia.
While it was never written, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gailman talked about the second book all through the night whenever they shared hotel room while promoting the first book. It’s somewhere on Neil’s tumblr where he said that.
So while it is only Neil that wrote the second season, i think he’d know what Terry wanted out of it too.
Yeah I agree, the thing that makes the book so good is the tag-team between Pratchett and Gaiman, Pratchett was amazing at mixing humor and seriousness like a true comedian. No offense towards Gaiman of course, but even if it’s good it’ll probably feel like something is missing, because it is.