May 20, 2019
David Arnold Scores GOOD OMENS
– Randall D. Larson
Grammy-winning film composer David Arnold (SHERLOCK, TOMORROW NEVER DIES, INDEPENDENCE DAY) has scored GOOD OMENS, the forthcoming comical horror series forthcoming from Amazon Prime and the BBC.
The six-episode series is based on the 1990 novel Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. A co-production between Amazon Prime and BBC Two, the series was directed by Douglas Mackinnon and written by Gaiman, who served as showrunner. The series cast includes David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Jon Hamm, Anna Maxwell Martin, and Miranda Richardson and Nick Offerman. The series follows the demon Crowley (Tennant) and the angel Aziraphale (Sheen), who, being accustomed to life on Earth, seek to prevent the coming of the antichrist and with it the final battle between Heaven and Hell.
In an interview with Adam Sherwin for the British website inews posted on May 16th, David Arnold described the challenging job of creating a coherent theme for a six-hour TV series that expands across continents and historical eras: “The story is labyrinthine and the cast is so massive, the trick is to find something which pulls it all together… It’s almost three and a half hours of new music. Often composers re-use music in episodic TV to display something about a character but this never stops moving.”
While the series tells its story with a strong degree of sardonic humor, Arnold kept his score focused on the darker areas of storyline, often contrasting the music of light against the strains of the night. “Whenever you hear a beautiful solo violin line or a pure soprano voice, it will be swamped by something modulated and distorted an octave down,” said Arnold. “It’s not evil, horror film music, but the angel and the devil are both on your shoulder.” The composer rather proudly revealed that during one scene where a picture of Satan is shown, “at bar 66, where the musicians are playing, the tempo is exactly 66.6!”
Read the entire inews article here.
All six episodes of the serial are set to be released on May 31, 2019 on Amazon Prime, and later broadcast weekly on BBC Two.
Geek Music has released a cover of Arnold’s “Good Omens : Opening Title Theme,” available for download from Amazon, Amazon UK, and Amazon France.
Watch GOOD OMENS’ title sequence, featuring David Arnold’s music:
