What do angels eat? And can food be a good reason for having a body, rather than being spirituals entities dancing on the head of a pin? These existential questions run through Good Omens, the adaptation of the1990 novel co-written by Neil Gaiman (who also wrote the TV series) and the late Terry Pratchett, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. This delightful mini-series features Michael Sheen in the role of the angel Aziraphale and David Tennant playing the demon Crawley. He is the one who tempted Eve with an apple, although apparently he does not really care much about food and eating, except as means to get his way (cars and technology are his thing).
Aziraphale, instead, can’t have enough earthly delights. We see him in Roman times eager to taste the oysters by a certain Petronius, and later risking the guillotine to go to France and have crepes during the Terror (“you can’t get decent ones anywhere but Paris. And the brioche…”). He also has a penchant for Bordeaux wine, which he collects and which Crawley uses to get him solemnly drunk. He is a quintessential and exaggerated foodie, ready to cross vast bodies of water to taste what he fancies when he gets peckish. Crawley, in his devious ways, knows that a good meal is the way to get his angelic friend to listen to him, so he shamelessly uses invitations to the best tables of London to convince him to collaborate. Food becomes the substance of a bromance (or maybe real love, on Aziraphale’s part) that lasts for millennia.
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The show is also a reflection on some of today’s emergencies: the Four Riders of the Apocalypse – War, Famine, Death, and Pollution, which has replaced Pestilence for obvious reasons – are among the causes of the impending Armageddon (well, besides the Antichrist and all that… ). However, Famine is not about lack of food or starvation: it is all about the distortions in our contemporary food system and in our eating habits. We hear the voice of God (female, by the way) narrating “He loves hunger. He loves people not eating enough in fancy restaurants” while on screen a client in a fine dining establishment is presented a dish with very few bites of actual edible matter: gels and foams beautifully plated and served with ballon full of lavender-scented air. Satisfied with what he sees, Famine states: “I have never seen a room full or rich people so hungry before.”
But besides this not-so-imaginative jab at modernist cuisine, it is around fast food that Famine gets really diabolical. As the owner of a chain of middle-brow diners, he launches a new line of products under the trademark name of Chow: “food-free food: artificial bun, artificial burger, fries that have never seen a potato, foodless sauces, and – we are rather proud of this – a completely artificial dill pickle. The shake doesn’t contain any actual food content either.” The novelty products cannot be legally called food. Every time they are served, a button has to be pushed that starts an electronic voice reciting a quick and barely understandable series of caveats: “Chow-brand unfood contains spun, plaited and woven protein molecules designed to be ignored by your digestive enzymes, no-cal sweeteners, oil replacements, fibrous materials, colorings and flavorings. Chow us an edible substance and must not be confused with food. Eating Chow can help you lose weight, hair and kidney functions. May cause anal leakage. Enjoy your meal.”
Those “edible substances” are not about providing any nourishment, but rather a ruse for industries to make money. The critique of nutrient-poor and potentially dangerous mass-produced food is far from veiled. Also the impact of technology and science on what we eat becomes the object of satire: products like Protein shakes and lab-grown meat come to mind, which are not harmful but remove us from the reality of food production. The show aims at the excesses in both the high end and the low end of what we eat. At the same time, we are reminded of the powerful emotional connections that shared meals can forge. Even angels and demons can find common ground around the table.