Wow, I’m surprised to read that despite glowing reviews and much hype, HBO’s Angels in America didn’t do so well ratings-wise. I thought it was fantastic. I laughed, I cried. Powerful stuff. (Pictured: Justin Kirk, who plays Prior Walter. More about him in a recent Times article. Ah, yes, he was on the short-lived WB series Jack & Jill; I knew I recognized him from somewhere!)
I guess the average cable watcher isn’t ready for a two-part, six-hour, “gay fantasia on national themes” (the play’s subtitle, though as you might expect, it wasn’t included in the movie iteration). From the week’s ratings review in Wednesday’s Post:
Grievously, HBO’s ambitious six-hour adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play goes into the losers’ column after Sunday’s premiere of Part 1 clocked 4.2 million viewers.
HBO reports that it was its biggest long-form debut this calendar year but acknowledges that, in homes that subscribe to HBO, CBS’s insipid little flick “Undercover Christmas” did better than “Angels.”
Sunday’s audience for “Angels,” one of HBO’s most critically acclaimed projects, was roughly one-third that of the final original episode of “The Sopranos” a year ago, and far smaller than audiences amassed by some of HBO’s other highly hyped projects, such as Steven Spielberg’s 10-hour “Band of Brothers,” which opened with 10 million watching on Sept. 9, 2001, and the first “If These Walls Could Talk,” which 7 million watched in 1996 when HBO had fewer subscribers. Sunday’s premiere was not a train wreck; it was on par with other HBO movies, such as “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge,” which scored 4.1 million viewers in its first telecast.
Related interviews, from NPR: playwright Tony Kushner on Fresh Air (Dec. 9), and “The ‘Angels in America’ Business Plan” (Day to Day, Dec. 11).
