The Big Picture

Fans of Good Omens have been dissecting every detail of the show, searching for Easter eggs and clues that expand Neil Gaiman’s magical world. Michael Ralph, the production designer, played a crucial role in creating the look and feel of the Good Omens universe. The decision to expand the world beyond the novel led to the creation of a larger bookshop set and the inclusion of new shops in Soho, adding depth and charm to the series.

Now that Season 2 of Good Omens is out for everyone to watch, fans have been poring over absolutely every detail that makes up the series, looking for Easter eggs and clues that build on Neil Gaiman’s ethereal world. From the interior of Aziraphale’s (Michael Sheen) bookshop to the look of heaven and hell, every square inch of the series is packed with detail, creating a magical world where anything’s possible – even hiding an amnesiac archangel in your upstairs bedroom.

But among all the faces working on the show, there’s one man responsible for the look and feel of the world fans have come to know and love: Michael Ralph, the show’s production designer. Currently working on another Neil Gaiman joint, Anansi Boys, Ralph helped bring Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s vision to the silver screen, working in tandem with his wife, set decorator Bronwyn Franklin, to fully realize a world for Aziraphale, Crowley, and all their angel and demon pals to live in.

Collider was excited to sit down with Ralph to discuss expanding the world of Good Omens for Season 2, including fleshing out the other shops in Soho and how the expanded version of the bookshop came to be. During this interview, he also discusses his work with Franklin, as well as what it’s like having someone like Neil Gaiman giving you creative input.

Image via Prime Video

COLLIDER: I absolutely love this show, and I really love the look of it. Getting to watch Season 2 and getting to watch this world expand was really interesting for me. Obviously, you were the production designer on Season 1, but this season expands this world quite a bit. When you were told, “Okay, we’re gonna move beyond the novel,” what was your process for saying, “Okay, this is how we’re gonna expand this world?”

MICHAEL RALPH: Well, it didn’t go down that way. What happened really was deciding that the bookshop was always a visual anchor to the show, and the street and the crossroads and what has been established in the street in Season 1 still existed. The decision was whether we went inside, and how we could expand it if we did go inside, and how big would it have to be, and how could we play with it when it was inside? And it got bigger [laughs], a lot bigger. I mean, originally, we only had the ground floor of most of the street and no pub, no corner on one corner of the crossroads at all, and we had no upper levels. Then we obviously had everything that, on Season 1, had to stand up to a lot of weather and [an] unfortunate snowstorm and a few other things. So, that’s very difficult to play with.

Then to have a beautiful set like that out on an airfield in the middle of nowhere in that weather is strange. So, to go inside was a pleasure. But to find something big enough, and then to grow it– I think very early in the piece, Neil [Gaiman] said to me that he needs eyeline from the record shop interior counter to the counter in the coffee shop, and from the counter in the coffee shop to the window where Aziraphale [Michael Sheen] is sitting, and then that triangulated point of view needs to be incorporated. That was my first opening concept of how I could make the set work because we only had one interior set—well, we had the interior of the coffee shop—but we only had one interior set, and that was the one in the bookshop on Season 1. The coffee shop looked like an interior, but it was really not deep enough, and it will only serve people walking in and out the door.

But what a joy to be able to do something like the French restaurant! And the alleyway always existed to the music shop, I just put it as an entrance to the music shop because I wanted the music shop to be away from the street as well. But to put the magic shop in and the pub and the record shop? Good Lord! [laughs]

Image via Prime Video

We see the interior of the record shop very briefly. I used to live in London, and it reminds me so much of all of those little record shops that you see walking through parts of Soho. Did you have any sort of specific inspiration for the look inside there?

RALPH: Well, two things of interest happened. The concept of that bookshop is exactly as what it was built. The color of it and the amount of detail in it is what I wanted to produce, and it’s something that had been there a long time, something that used to be popular in the ‘70s and ‘60s but has somehow slipped in its popularity but still hangs on into old Soho. I did a lot of research on what I love about those shops, and a lot of pictorial and imagery, before I settled on what I thought would work character-wise.

I think in the end, what really sort of made it interesting to me was that I literally gave the set to the lead graphics designer, and said, “Okay, this is your world. What can you do with it?” And she created everything, like 80 different bands, because copyright’s so difficult. She created 80 bands with album covers and songs that went with the albums and huge amounts of humor. Goodness me, if you could just get into some of those album covers and read some of those songs, it is hilarious, and they all followed weird themes. Then I gave it to the graphics department to dress. So, they actually came down off their tables and desks and went in there and had a hoop and holler in there for two or three days, and papered up all of their made-up graphics posters and events and record covers. It was such great fun. The inclusivity of everyone’s input was what gave that such character and heart.

You mentioned Neil Gaiman said that he wanted that sort of eyeline between the three shops. Obviously, he invented this world with Terry Pratchett, but how much input did he have on the design of everything?

RALPH: The lovely, most fabulous thing about Neil, and I’m sure he’d agree, [is] that when you find a creative sympatico with somebody, there is no question about what you’re going to say actually works, or what you’re going to draw works. I mean, I’m very quick with concept art, and I quickly get an emotional feel from what Neil’s written, and it’s all about emotion to me. I’ve got to know the piece well enough to read between the lines because it’s what Neil doesn’t say as much as what he does say that engages your apophenia, your ability to see what isn’t there, and what you see that isn’t there is what moves you. So if you can grasp that, in all honesty, then you’ll get what other people feel, as well, from what he’s written. That’s how intuitive that writing has to be.

So, Neil never says, “Oh, I saw it this way,” or, “I saw it that way.” He never says that. He walks off the concept art, and he says great complimentary things on the concept art. Then when he walks into the set, he either has a little moment where he wells up a little, or he just gets very joyful [and] wanders around and reads and looks at everything. He feels the space. Every once in a while, he’ll say to me that this is exactly as he felt it was, or this is great, and that’s really the connection we have. That’s rare, and it’s not an impersonation. It’s somewhere raw in the resource, raw in what he’s given already, so it’s fantastic. It’s fantastic to work like that. I don’t know one instance out of literally 180 or 200 pieces of concept art that I’ve done for Good Omens [Season] 1 and 2 that he’s ever said, “Oh no, I don’t wanna do that.” [laughs] Ever.

Image via Prime Video

I want to go back to the bookshop for a second because, like you mentioned, it now has a second floor in the season, and we get to see so much more of it. As a big reader, I feel like I could go into this set and spend hours just sort of looking at everything. Is there a detail that you added this season that maybe we see it on screen, maybe we don’t, that you think adds something really interesting to the personality of the bookshop?

RALPH: Well, not really, because it’s an almost exact duplicate. The second-floor mezzanine floor existed out in Boddington air base, and [in] Season 1, that set was there the same as it is in the studio. The crew walk onto that set, and all they wanna do is live upstairs and drink red wine and read books all day. That’s all anyone wants to do on that set. And that’s incredibly complimentary because, in a way, it means that you’ve touched a nerve of comfort and nostalgia and safety, and an overwhelming sense of well-being that people feel that they feel happy enough to want to do that.

It comes right down to having 7,000 real books in there and not one fake book. It comes down to the smell of all the books. And as much as that sounds like, you know, “Why would you talk about the smell of books on a television series or a piece of cinema?” the fact is that the crew feel it, the actors feel it, we all feel it, and that respect runs right through the whole thing like a domino effect. Everyone feels elevated by it and shows respect for the care that everyone put into it, and everyone falls in love with it. If everyone walking in there just wants to sit and cuddle up in the corner there and find their little corner and read their book, how wonderful! If everyone walks into the bar across the road, the pub that we built, and everyone goes and finds their little seat, [laughs] they all find someone to have a drink, and you imagine if it was real bar that everyone would find a nook. If you can create something that has that sense of nostalgia and of reality to it that you feel, how beautiful is that effect, you know?

You also get to work with your wife [Bronwyn Franklin], who is the set decorator on this show. What is that process like, working with her?

RALPH: [Laughs] Well, it was really interesting because we’ve been together an awful long time, like longer than a long time. It works because Bronwyn, as a set decorator, has a huge heart. So, she’s so emotionally connected and in tune with people that she is so in love with the script, or the original source, that she sees the characters, but she sees them beyond the page; she sees them in a complete form. So, it’s a collective.

When we create something like the bookshop, Bronwyn feels and sees Aziraphale for what he is and goes deeper and further back, and creates the history behind him, or deeper, further back of every character, including the record shop. When I’ve done the concept art, Bronwyn will work off the concept art, but then she expands it. So when we dress the set, and I love dressing all the sets, I get lost in there – I could get lost in there for days. I find all this stuff on the table that she’s purchased that is characterful. Sometimes it goes straight from the table to my hand, straight to where it belongs, and it never shifts, and that’s where it would be if I was Aziraphale. And I think all of that process, if you like humanity and character understanding, is what gives her that edge that has to come from a very good place. So having such a heart like that, seeing the goodness of everybody, which is what she does, emanates and echoes and resonates with everybody. Really and truly, I think that that’s the ingredient that gives, not just Good Omens, but in this particular case, Good Omens, the heart or the soul that is invisible, that we all care about. And I think it’s incredibly important.

The better we do our job, the more invisible we are. And the more people don’t notice it, they feel it. Because, as I was saying, if we start from an emotional place, because it’s really about how you are moved by and what you see in your mind’s eye, not what you can build, or it’s not about how much money you’ve got to build it, even. It’s about what’s the ambition of the piece or what is it you’re feeling? So if you feel that attached to it, so does she, and so does the concept artist, and so does everybody else, and they all pour in, and they’re all-inclusive, then it’s gotta have an empathy with the audience.

Season 2 of Good Omens is now available to stream on Prime Video.