The Big Picture

• Angels in America is a highly acclaimed play and miniseries that explores the lives of characters during the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York City.
• The miniseries format was chosen to adapt the play due to its complex and interconnected plot, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of the story.
• Angels in America elevated the miniseries format by sweeping major awards and showcasing the potential of adapting source material that cannot be contained in a traditional film.

In 1993, the play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes premiered on Broadway. Created by Tony Kushner (who some may know now for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg, most recently The Fablemans) it's a play that follows the lives of those in New York City during the late 1980s, in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, which blossomed into an epic of quite literally biblical proportions. The experiences and affairs of a dying prophet, an unhappy couple, an arrogant prosecutor, and all those who surround them collide as a new era begins. Angels in America was a special moment in the theatrical world. Part 1: Millennium Approaches alone won multiple Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards, along with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It never fails to receive a trophy when it's revived for the stage, with Kushner solidifying himself and his work in the canon of legendary playwrights.

It should come as no surprise that, ten years later, the play was adapted — but not to the big screen, as many famous plays before and after it. In 2003, HBO released Angels in America as a limited series, which became one of the greatest examples of storytelling put on screen. The cast was equally blockbuster, with Patrick Wilson in a career-best role as the closeted Joe Pitt, and Jeffrey Wright returning to the part he played on Broadway. There are some smaller actors you've probably never heard of, including Al Pacino as real-life conservative figure Roy Cohn, Meryl Streep as Joe's Mother, and Emma Thompson as the Angel of America herself. The series became one of the few to sweep all the categories it was nominated for and is still regarded as one of the best portrayals of the AIDS crisis put on the screen.

The Only Way to Adapt 'Angels in America' Was to Make It a TV Series

For those who have sat through all seven or so hours of the original play, both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, you'd know that there is a lot to cover: conflicts both personal and existential, cheating lovers, debating the almighty, living with dying, hallucinations, Mormons, and Ethel Rosenburg. According to The Essential HBO Reader, bringing this film to the screen was a process that lasted over a decade, with executive producer Cary Brokaw campaigning for an adaptation even before the play went to Broadway.

Kushner certainly tried to fit his play into one film, in the knowledge that turning Angels in America into a Lord of the Rings-style, big-budget, multi-movie extravaganza would be an incredibly difficult sell for studios, but he ran into the obvious problem: there was too much plot. How does one make cuts in a stage play when there's no fat to trim? The lives of all the characters are intertwined with not only each other but the play's themes. In Angels in America, it all feels like it matters, despite the length — not to mention that it would be a sin to cut dialogue that's so gorgeous and lyrical.

As a result, the miniseries format was chosen, and HBO Films was the studio to produce it hot off the heels of the wildly successful Band of Brothers. Just because it was no longer a film adaptation didn't mean it wasn't cinematic. With a budget of $60 million, it allowed for the scope the production needed and allowed them to shoot at Hadrian's Villa in Rome for the finale. Behind the scenes, the production team was as blockbuster as the cast. At first, Robert Altman was set to direct, but he stepped down in 1994, citing budget constraints, so Mike Nichols, who had ample experience in both directing and adapting theatrical productions, came in to direct the miniseries. Even if you don't know Nichols' name, you know his work directing classics such as The Birdcage, The Graduate, and Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. The gorgeous soundtrack was composed by Thomas Newman, who's scored on films from Finding Nemo to 1917, and Star Wars veteran and Industrial Light & Magic founding member Richard Edlund was in charge of the visual effects.

'Angels in America' Further Elevated the Miniseries Format

There are a few series that are at the least nominated for every Primetime Emmy Award they are eligible to get, including all four acting categories. The Crown was the most recent sweep in 2021, as well as Schitt's Creek a year before, but Angels in America was the very first. On top of that, it won every eligible category at the Golden Globes that year, as well as Screen Actors Guild Awards and GLAAD Media Awards, not to mention the soundtrack won the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack — and this is in addition to all the accolades the original plays received collectively. No wonder, then, that Angels in America was the biggest television event of the 2003-04 season, receiving overwhelming acclaim across the board.

More importantly, it showed once and for all that the miniseries format worked, and why it worked. It served as an example of properly adapting source material that can't be properly squeezed into two-plus hours. It was open-and-shut, with no heartbreaks about unexpected cancelations that leave a story unfinished. For a time, the premium cable network HBO would make the biggest and the best, with Angels in America truly perfecting what Band of Brothers began. John Adams would sweep the Emmy Awards once again in 2008, and more high-quality miniseries, especially adaptations of literature and history, would be produced in collaboration with networks such as the BBC and Sky Atlantic.

As the format for television viewing went from cable networks to streaming services — and as those services picked up more steam and, as a result, money — there was a lot more skin in the game. The format has worked extremely well on streamers like Netflix, where the entire series is released at once. Its most recent success in this regard is the most recent Mike Flanagan outing, The Fall of the House of Usher. On HBO, more traditional miniseries, often referred to as limited series, are generally well received — with some, like Watchmen or Chernobyl, being a highlight of the year in television. But they're not the grand events that Angels in America truly was at that time, the height of prestige television and an omen of the epics that would follow.

Perhaps the market is just too oversaturated at this point. What truly is prestige television if everyone is doing it? Nevertheless, now that the miniseries has celebrated its twentieth anniversary, it's highly recommended that you seek out Angels in America, and not just for its importance and significance in representing LGBTQ+ history. It's one of the rare pieces of media that can arguably be called perfect, and it's worth every minute of its titanic length.

Angels in America is available to stream on Max.

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