October 3, 2025 by A.S. Van Dorston

Favorite book #6. The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Inspired by the 1976 film The Omen, this is a comedy about the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, who did not so much fall from heaven as saunter vaguely downwards. Through the millennia, they evolve from enemies to begrudging rivals (per the WB cartoon with the wolf and sheepdog who punch in and out of work) to frenemies to best friends and possibly more. They realize they love the Earth, the people and their creature comforts (Aziraphale runs a bookstore called A.Z. Fell and Co.) too much to let it self-destruct. Heaven and Hell are committed to fulfilling the prophecy of the end times triggered by the birth of the Antichrist, but Aziraphale and Crowley do their best to sabotage these plans. It helps that the baby was mistakenly placed with the wrong family, growing up in the idyllic countryside rather than swapped with the baby of a diplomat, but there’s much more the unlikely duo need to accomplish to avoid the apocalypse, such as contending with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse–War, Famine (a fast-food tycoon), Pollution (pestilence retired after the discovery of penicillin) and Death (a biker).

They search for the antichrist, hoping to sway him from evil, though mainly as his powers manifest, he’s more interested in raising Atlantis, summoning UFOs and restoring the Amazon rainforest. This was the funniest book I’d read since Hitchhiker’s Guide. No small coincidence that Neil Gaiman met Terry Pratchett after writing his first book, 1985’s Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Terry Gilliam was originally going to do a movie of it starring Johnny Depp and Robin Williams but couldn’t get funding. Shortly before his death in 2015, Pratchett asked Gaiman to write scripts for a TV series. And thus came the Amazon/BBC series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant in 2019. A third season was announced in 2023, but was reduced to a single 90 minute episode to wrap things up, after Gaiman’s sex scandal allegations. The release date still hasn’t been anounced. However, the Pratchett estate initiated a Kickstarter to fund a graphic novel treatment, and should be in the works. Another TV series was created based on a demon character created by Gaiman in a DC comic, Lucifer.