BY DIANE WERTS. STAFF WRITERIN OUR wide-ranging TV times, surprise is one of the few great thrills left for tube fans to experience. Sure, we've had graphic realism and intimate revelation, cutting edge-comedy and tell-all talk. The envelope has been pushed so far, we've seen all sorts of things we never expected to see on TV. But true surprise - something so fresh that it catches us completely off-guard, overturns our assumptions and becomes an absolutely unexpected delight - that can really blow us away. And even jaded TV critics (ahem) are getting blown away these days by a most unlikely source: the frank spirituality and altogether solid storytelling of CBS' sudden Saturday hit, "Touched by an Angel." When this hour debuted two falls back, industry eyes rolled, cynical tongues wagged and TV critics' scathing reviews used every heaven / hell cliche in the book. Angels appearing in human form to troubled people? Offering them hope through blunt talk about God and faith? C'monnn! And yet . . . The show stubbornly hung on, through crummy time slots against hits like "Roseanne," through being yanked off the air for months and then handed the hard-luck Saturday 9 p.m. hour. Viewers just kept finding their way to the series - and telling others about it. By the time anybody in the business started noticing - during last month's sweeps, some 30 episodes later - "Touched by an Angel" was suddenly sitting in Nielsen's Top 15, outranking its popular "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" lead-in. You could say it's because the series' timing couldn't have been better, what with the current angel-mania of books, TV specials and cherub-filled merchandise manifesting the public's desire to feel heavenly beings are watching over us. But there's more to it. Even Viewers for Quality Television, the grass-roots group that usually trumpets hard-hitting hours like "NYPD Blue" and "Homicide," has started to support this very unsappy descendant of "Highway to Heaven." "It's the kind of show I normally flee from," says VQT president Dorothy Swanson. "You know, those so-called `family shows' with the lessons that hit you over the head." But when VQT members kept writing in, "saying that we're overlooking this one, that, hey, it's not religious, it's not saccharine, it's spiritual," Swanson finally gave it a try. "I got that old lump in the throat, and that never happens to me," she admits. "If I forget to tape it now, I feel badly, like I've missed something that would be uplifting and positive." She expects "some level of endorsement" from VQT members on their next ballot. It's not news to the show's guiding light, executive producer Martha Williamson, or to its star angel, Roma Downey. "We seem to hear that a lot," says Downey, the Irish actress best known for her turn as Jacqueline Onassis in the "Woman Called Jackie" mini-series. "We've been in the Top Twenty the last two months. Yet, you rarely pick up and read about us anywhere, particularly in the more fashionable magazines. The feeling is, we're not hip." Ah, but that's changing, as more viewers tune in to discover the "simplistic" show they'd blithely been dismissing is actually a deep and savvy gut-level drama. Entertainment Weekly did a feature last week, and a TV Guide story is in the works. "I think people are realizing there's nothing unhip about being spiritual," Williamson says by phone from her L.A. office, "that faith and sophistication are not mutually exclusive." Not in this series, anyway. Williamson came to "Touched by an Angel" from the acclaimed James Earl Jones family drama "Under One Roof," and her "Angel" directors include such veterans as Michael Schultz ("Cooley High"). They've attracted a who's-who of guest stars - poet Maya Angelou, music greats Natalie Cole and Barbara Mandrell, blues legend B.B. King, seasoned actors like Joe Morton, Gregory Harrison, Paul Winfield, Phylicia Rashad and A Martinez - by offering them stories that are meaty, timely and wonderfully unpredictable. No pat homilies to tidy up human messes here. The angels themselves aren't even infallible. Downey's Monica is a well-meaning but inexperienced and impatient caseworker who makes mistakes. She tends to jump to easy conclusions about her at-the-crossroads human clients - until her "Miss Wings" attitude gets adjusted by her no-nonsense angel supervisor, played by Della Reese. "The angels have free will," stresses Williamson, a no-nonsense woman herself and admitted longtime seeker who studied philosophy before turning to script writing for "Facts of Life" and Carol Burnett's variety show. "We see the angels in human form, but at the same time they're not human beings. They explore humanity with us as a result - emotions and decision-making and ethics." A strong episode about homelessness last season had Monica feeling pride in her own angelic accomplishments and not much sympathy for the down-and-out case played by Gregory Harrison - until she'd lived on the street with him and felt the same cold, fear and hopelessness. By episode's end she was begging both God's forgiveness and her client's - by washing his diseased feet. The biblical symbolism was hardly subtle. Yet, it spoke simply and eloquently in the context of a surprisingly gritty episode about a hard contemporary problem. "Touched by an Angel" doesn't follow any formula. And it isn't shy about plumbing the depths of pain and desperation of its weekly lead characters, precisely the people who need an angel most. It isn't shy, either, in speaking blatantly about God and prayer - no coy euphemisms here. This faith is utter and abiding, expressed with a clarity so earnest, relevant and immutable that it demands respect whether you share it or not. "I'm making the show for people who have lost hope, whatever they believe," Williamson says. "But I'm not stupid. I know that our core audience are people who have been waiting for this, people who have been wanting to see some absolutes show up on television. "I'll tell you something. I have been working on episodes of television shows where, for example, they have situational ethics. `It's okay if I take this, 'cause it'll work out in the end.' `It's okay to lie to my roommate in order to protect myself.' It unfortunately reinforces the fact that the ends justify the means." BUT ON "Touched by an Angel," she snaps, "You don't bargain with God. Never once on my show has somebody said, `If You let me live, then I will be a better person.' God doesn't make deals. And nobody says that better than Della Reese." "We don't wave a magic wand and fix it and make it right," booms Reese over a cell phone from the "Angel" set (it's filmed around Salt Lake City). "We just say, `This is not the only way it could be. Have you thought about this?' We don't dictate, we don't preach, we don't tell you what to do." And "we do not promote any persuasion," proclaims Reese. A gospel singer since age 6 - and that was 60-some years ago - she refuses to label her own religion, because "I am not interested in religion, I'm interested in a relationship with God." "The show does indeed dare to mention God," star Downey agrees in a separate phone interview, "but the God we love and serve as angels on the show is a God of love, not a Catholic God, or a Jewish God, or a Muslim God." (Her religion? "Catholicism started me on a journey that I'm still on," says the Derry native.) Williamson agrees, "Religion is just what people make up. There's God, and then there's religion." (The producer's creed? "So far, the closest to the truth I've gotten personally was becoming a Christian.") Fans of "Touched by an Angel" come from all sects. "Every religious tradition believes in angels," says Rabbi Marc Gelman, co-host of TV's popular discussion show "The God Squad" with Msgr. Thomas Hartman, "but our rationalist and secularist age has made that belief embarrassing to some people. The way this show does it is sort of the right way to do it - not to spend time defending whether angels are real, but like all good storytellers, getting people to suspend their disbelief." "Touched by an Angel" even serves atheists - and Williamson says her writing staff does include nonbelievers - in the way its stories promote the healing powers of hope, love and fellowship, especially for those who feel isolated on society's fringes. A fall episode that cast Cole as an HIV-positive woman and Angelou as her lover's unstrung mother forced all its characters to reexamine their fears and blinders - and to open their hearts to each other as to God. Yet, for every "issue" episode, "Touched by an Angel" does several that address the distress of the individual soul. Monica serves as a mirror to allow her subjects to see themselves - and free themselves from the self-imposed tyranny of terrible secrets or guilt. She helps them voice and conquer their if-only, why-didn't-I, what-if self-recriminations, and their why-me, it's-all-so-random bewilderment and despair. The way this show unleashes internal emotions it isn't afraid to be sentimental. Tears flow in nearly every episode as complex wounds begin to heal. But it's never judgmental - in contemporary political or social terms - about its characters' transgressions. "Noooo," the producer cautions. "Somebody who truly loves God is gonna let Him do the judging. God doesn't care if you're black, white, liberal, conversative, Democrat, Republican. What I love is trying to break down walls of judgment, to show people you can be a person of faith, and you don't have to be a religious fanatic." ONE OF HER favorite episodes this season "could've taken people from `Melrose Place,' " she notes - a cool crowd of artsy yuppies at a party, suddenly plunged into a suspense story of gunfire and death. Slickly told in odd-angle flashbacks, its point nonetheless was that the mystery could only be solved by an anguished witness opening herself up to faith. "It came down to her own decision," Williamson says. "And it didn't deal with the people you'd imagine of a typical `family show.' " Indeed, a V-chip or TV ratings system would be kept busy by this decidedly unsanitized series. People treat one another badly, they injure each other and die. Its near-anthology nature means "Touched by an Angel" is an intimate character study one week with guest stars Cole and Angelou, an issue drama with Harrison the next, then a family yarn with Joan Van Ark and Ed Begley Jr., and a chase-and-gunfire cop hour when Joe Penny appears. It's even been an out-right good-vs.-evil melodrama in two episodes featuring Jasmine Guy as a "fallen" angel eager to steal souls. And some of Monica's cases are hard cases, indeed - unsympathetic people whose side you wouldn't necessarily think you'd be on. Some of them aren't going to make it. The series has added an "angel of death" played by John Dye("Jack's Place"), who escorts departed souls - even children - to their life beyond. (Williamson admits, however, that Dye's addition "is mostly due right now to the fact that Roma is [six months] pregnant. We needed somebody to pass to.") That's about as "magical" as this heavenly show gets. Williamson is a stern taskmaster about having "Touched by an Angel" keep its feet on the ground. She came on board after CBS rejected the original pilot, which she calls "what you would expect. More of a fantasy. The angels flew, and they raised a dog from the dead. It was a very cynical show." She started over, keeping only Downey and Reese, consulting the Bible, and making clear that "God is not stupid. He's not spiteful, He doesn't make mistakes, He knows what He's doing. The angels love their job and respect their boss, and they do not have the power over life and death." What they do have is the power of affirming God's love to souls in turmoil. At some point in each episode, Monica reveals to her human charge that she is indeed a heavenly angel, in precisely the sort of ethereal bright-light scene that ought to send skeptics fleeing. But Williamson's acute story development and Downey's thoughtful sincerity keep 'em watching. "I often wonder if the accent helps me," Downey says in her Irish lilt. "John Dye paid me the nicest compliment when he had to do one of these scenes with me for the first time. He said, `How do you say this stuff?' But you just say it like you really believe it." And as "Touched by an Angel" continues, more and more people do. "If you don't already think in a tiny corner of your mind that angels do exist," VQT head Swanson says, "after you watch this show you think it's possible. And that's not a bad feeling to have."
Newsday, 03-17-1996, pp 18.
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