Good Omens Set Secrets: Behind the Scenes of a Fairy Tale Fantasy and TV’s “Loveliest Couple”

Lift up the round carpet and you’ll see a circular design on the floor, which Aziraphale and Crowley can use to perform a miracle or which can also become a portal. The symbols are taken from various different ancient religions, rather than drawing on one religious tradition in particular. Look up, and you’ll see a skylight designed in the style of a 17th-century “oculus”. “As soon as I did the oculus,” Ralph says, “I decided the steelwork would be in a compass. And so it’s like a 17th century compass up there. And when that’s the compass, and this is the magnetic centre of the compass, you must be able to jump portals or go [to] different dimensions”.
To your left is Aziraphale’s study, with Good Omens co-author Terry Pratchett’s famous hat and scarf still hanging on the coat rack. Aziraphale’s desk looks like the desk of any book-lover and academic, covered in manuscripts, letters, and bits and pieces. Sitting above the desk are some of his collection of Bibles and prophecies. Behind it are shelves filled with scrolls, suggesting Aziraphale has collected some very old books indeed. And on the shelves to the left of the desk are a present from Adam’s friend Wensleydale from season one of the TV show – a set of ringbinders containing his collection of The Wonders of Science and Nature magazines.

The bookshop is covered in small figurines and statues of angels, as well as characters from Greek myth and history. A head of Alexander the Great watches over the study, while Aziraphale’s desk is topped with a figurine of what looks like the tragic death of Hippolytus in a chariot. His chess set is designed with pieces dressed as Greco-Roman gods, soldiers, or columns as the rooks.
There is a small washbasin tucked away in a dark corner to the right of the study, and a very old-fashioned water system. “That’s where he makes his cocoa”, Ralph explains. Behind that is Aziraphale’s computer, which appears to date from the 1980s. “He’s got an old computer that he never, ever, upgraded from, and doesn’t use anyway”, Ralph tells us. You can follow the corridor to a sitting room at the back before wending your way back through the bookshelves and ancient sofas towards the front. The whole space is completely three-dimensional. “When the crew first came here”, Ralph says, they, “all they wanted to do was live upstairs and drink red wine and read books all day”. We’re right there with them.
Maggie and Nina’s Shops: Records, Powell & Pressburger, and Terry & Neil Graffiti
Next to the bookshop is Maggie’s record shop, which is called The Small Back Room. Maggie may not hang on to receipts from the 1960s or a 1980s computer like Aziraphale does, but there is still a charmingly old-fashioned feel to the place. The walls are plastered with album covers, all of which had to be created and written by the set decoration team.
“We couldn’t use the real ones”, Set Decorator Bronwyn Franklin explains, “[because of] the clearance issues”. It would be impractical for the producers to try to secure worldwide rights to every album cover on the walls, so Franklin and her team wrote their own. “Both Neil and Michael went in and spent an hour there reading record covers because they were so funny.”