---
title: "Angels in America"
year: 2003
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/angels-in-america"
fi1m_score: 83
critics_score: 69
critics_reviews: 9
published: "2026-09-17T13:02:00.971227+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T13:02:14.188699+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Angels in America (2003)

Created by Tony Kushner · 58m · MPA TV-MA · Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

**Fi1m score: 83** · Critics 69 from 9 reviews

*In a sentence:* Meryl Streep plays four people, one of them an angel, and the main angel is still the least convincing thing in it

> Mike Nichols films Tony Kushner’s two plays as six hours of television and loses less than anyone had a right to expect. Pacino, Streep and Wright are magnificent; the angel, when she comes, is the one thing that worked better on a stage.

## Synopsis

New York, 1985. Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) shows his boyfriend Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman) the first lesion on his arm, and Louis, who cannot bear sickness, begins looking for a way out. Across town the lawyer Roy Cohn (Al Pacino) is told by his doctor (James Cromwell) that he has AIDS and instructs him to write down liver cancer. Roy wants Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), a Mormon clerk at the federal court, to take a job in Washington. Joe’s wife Harper (Mary-Louise Parker) stays in their Brooklyn flat on Valium, talking to Mr. Lies (Jeffrey Wright), a travel agent only she can see. Then Prior begins hearing a voice that says a messenger is coming.

## Review

Tony Kushner’s two plays, *Millennium Approaches* and *Perestroika*, run to about seven hours in a theatre and ask the stage for things it cannot quite deliver: an angel through a ceiling, a trip to Antarctica, a dead woman at a bedside. Mike Nichols and Kushner, who wrote the teleplay himself, have put them on television as six episodes of roughly an hour, first shown on 7 December 2003, and cut very little. Most of it works. The actors are the reason.

It is New York in 1985 and everyone is talking. Al Pacino’s Roy Cohn talks into two telephones at once, and when his doctor (James Cromwell) tells him he has AIDS he explains, first calmly and then not, that AIDS is what homosexuals get and he is a man with clout, so what he has is liver cancer. The shouting is what you expect from Pacino. The quiet afterwards, Roy on the edge of a hospital bed in his braces looking at the door, is worse. Meryl Streep plays four people, a rabbi, Ethel Rosenberg, the Angel Australia and Hannah Pitt, and is best as Hannah, the Mormon mother who sells her house in Salt Lake City to come and sort out her son. Jeffrey Wright’s Belize, the nurse who has to look after Roy and does, says the cruellest things in the softest voice, and the scene where he tells Roy which drug to demand from his doctor is the best six minutes in the whole thing.

Around them, four younger actors do the plainer work. Justin Kirk gives Prior Walter a wit that thins as the illness thickens. Ben Shenkman has the hardest part, Louis, who leaves his sick boyfriend and then talks politics for six hours to avoid talking about that, and never once asks to be forgiven. Mary-Louise Parker’s Harper, alone in her flat on Valium, imagining a travel agent (Wright again) who can take her to the ice, is funny and frightening in the same sentence. Patrick Wilson plays her husband Joe as handsome and blank, which is right.

Stuart Wurtzel builds the two flats small and cluttered and the hospital rooms large and bare, and Stephen Goldblatt lights the wards with a green cast so everyone in them looks a week nearer death. Ann Roth keeps Roy in shirtsleeves and braces and Harper in a housecoat. Thomas Newman’s score is bells and a wordless voice, and most of the time it stops when someone speaks. The editors, Antonia Van Drimmelen and John Bloom, keep Kushner’s split scenes, two rows in two flats cut into each other so that Louis seems to be answering Joe’s wife, and it is the one stage device that works better on screen than off.

We knew what was coming and it got us anyway. The scene where Prior shows Louis the first lesion and Louis goes to the bathroom to be sick is played by Kirk as an apology, as though the illness were bad manners, and by Shenkman as a man already halfway down the stairs. We were in tears. Then Harper asked Joe whether he was a homosexual and he answered with scripture, and we were angry, at him and at the year. That is the play working.

The angel is where it does not. Emma Thompson comes through Prior’s ceiling on wires in a shower of plaster, with computer-made wings and a voice thickened in the mix, and what a theatre audience accepts as a trick reads on screen as an effect. The second half sends Prior to a heaven Wurtzel designs as a ruined city, and it looks like a set, which the hospital never did. *Perestroika* also repeats itself: the arguments about God, blame and forgiveness go round at least three times, and somewhere in the fifth hour we looked at the clock and were slightly ashamed of it. Some British critics found the whole thing pompous. Kushner’s people do talk in paragraphs and know they are being overheard, but that is how these people talk, and Nichols, who filmed *Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?* in 1966, has always known how to make that kind of talk move.

Watch it as the two plays it is, three episodes a night, so the first half ends where Kushner ended it. It carries a 15 and earns it. The heavenly business is the least of it; the ill, the frightened and the appalling people in the rooms are the whole thing.

*Fi1m score 83, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics come down in favour, and the praise clusters in the same places: Mike Nichols’s direction, Tony Kushner’s script and a cast led by Al Pacino as Roy Cohn. The warmest reviews argue that the six hours earn their length and that Nichols keeps the play’s theatrical scale while making it work as television. The acting is admired almost everywhere, including by critics who do not care for the whole.

The dissent is sharper than the numbers suggest, and it is largely British. The Guardian and The Times both find the piece verbose and pompous, with Gill calling Nichols’s direction uncritical, and The Telegraph judges that the play shrinks on the small screen even as the performances hold up. Even admirers concede that some of the staging, the angel sequences in particular, sits awkwardly on screen. The spread is wide, with little in the middle: critics either accept the scale as the point or name it as the problem.

### Reviews we read (9)

- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Barry Garron (90/100, inferred): The six-hour HBO adaptation is demanding yet rewarding, with sweeping themes that justify its length as an artistically ingenious work of television. Nichols transforms the play into spectacular TV while retaining its theatrical essence, aided by a virtuoso cast and magnificent production values. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/angels-america-review-2003-hbo-tv-adaptation-1153657/)
- **Variety**, Todd McCarthy (90/100, inferred): The critic praises Mike Nichols' adaptation as a rare, masterful screen version of a stage epic that fully captures the play's grandeur, urgency, poetry, humor, and emotional melodrama without losing its theatrical power. The production is hailed as a class act thanks to its smart text, fabulous acting, and immaculate presentation, ensuring it a long life on cable, video, and festivals. [Read](https://variety.com/2003/tv/reviews/angels-in-america-7-1200537704/)
- **Empire**, Angie Errigo (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the HBO adaptation largely great and essential 'event' TV that the medium needs. They single out Mike Nichols' direction for mixing theatrical spectacle with cinematic style in thrilling, beautiful sequences. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/angels-america-review/)
- **The AV Club**, Nathan Rabin (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the phenomenal cast, Mike Nichols' sensitive direction, and Tony Kushner's script for achieving generation-defining ambitions in portraying the AIDS crisis and gay America. Some theatrical elements prove unwieldy on screen, particularly the angel scenes. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/angels-in-america-1798199989)
- **The Telegraph**, James Wolcott (50/100, inferred): The adaptation shrinks the theatrical epic's brio and audacity when moved to television, though it cannot be dismissed due to strong performances from the cast. Al Pacino's turn as Roy Cohn and other actors' work are highlighted positively amid the overall shrinkage effect. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3611628/A-descent-of-angels.html)
- **The Guardian** (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the HBO adaptation of the play a pompous, star-studded event television piece that fails to translate effectively to the small screen. The grandstanding manner and verbose style are singled out as unsuited to television. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2004/feb/15/features.review47)
- **The Times**, AA Gill (30/100, inferred): The series is seen as arch, verbose and ultimately undemanding despite its pedigree and cast. Mike Nichols's direction is criticised for being uncritical, and the production's liberal smugness is noted as a flaw. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/television-aa-gill-stars-are-wasted-on-these-arch-angels-ttlfbzpzrn9)
- **Collider**, Rhianna Malas (90/100, inferred): The 2003 HBO miniseries is one of the greatest examples of storytelling on screen and a landmark adaptation that elevated the miniseries format. It is praised for its epic scope, stellar cast including Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson, and its powerful portrayal of the AIDS crisis. [Read](https://collider.com/angels-in-america-hbo/)
- **/Film**, Debopriyaa Dutta (90/100, inferred): The Mike Nichols-directed HBO miniseries is a must-watch that beautifully translates Tony Kushner's play to the screen. It is celebrated for its complex examination of queerness, Reagan-era politics, the AIDS epidemic, and its zany yet poignant larger-than-life qualities. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/1999658/al-pacino-emmy-record-miniseries-angels-in-america-hbo-max/)

## Details

- **Created by:** Tony Kushner
- **Creator:** Tony Kushner
- **Director:** Mike Nichols
- **Writer:** Tony Kushner
- **Teleplay:** Tony Kushner
- **Cinematography:** Stephen Goldblatt
- **Editor:** Antonia Van Drimmelen, John Bloom
- **Music:** Thomas Newman
- **Production design:** Stuart Wurtzel
- **Costume design:** Ann Roth
- **Producer:** Celia D. Costas
- **Cast:** Al Pacino as Roy Cohn; Justin Kirk as Prior Walter / Leatherman in the Park; Ben Shenkman as Louis Ironson / The Angel Oceania; Mary-Louise Parker as Harper Pitt; Meryl Streep as Hannah Pitt / Ethel Rosenberg / The Rabbi / The Angel Australia; Jeffrey Wright as Norman 'Belize' Ariaga / Mr. Lies / Homeless man / The Angel Europa; Patrick Wilson as Joe Pitt; Emma Thompson as Nurse Emily / Homeless Woman / The Angel
- **Runtime:** 58m
- **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA
- **Release (the US):** 7 December 2003
- **Genres:** Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4bsQ6nsEZ8

## Where to watch in the US

- HBO Max: streaming
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on
- Hulu: add-on, hd
- The Roku Channel: add-on, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy, sd

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IT, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PE, PH, PL, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Wit* (2001): Nichols and Emma Thompson in one hospital room; shorter, harder, no wings.
- *Longtime Companion* (1989): The same years, the same city, told quietly and without a single angel.
- *120 BPM (Beats per Minute)* (2017): Paris activists in the early nineties; the fury Louis only talks about, acted on.
- *It's a Sin* (2021): London, the same decade, a shared flat; funnier for longer, then not at all.
- *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?* (1966): Nichols’s first go at filming a great American play; two couples, one long night.

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/angels-in-america