The word that arrived at my doorsteps about the HBO miniseries Angels in America was: fantastic. I knew Al Pacino and Meryl Streep were among the cast, but I had no idea what the miniseries was about.  This gave me a most pleasant of surprises watching the first of the six episodes. The teleplay was so powerful that I suspected the film had to be based on a play.  I was correct.  For very good reasons Tony Kushner won a Pulitzer Prize for the play Angels in America. The second and third episode were disappointments given the high bar the first episode had set. Episode 4 and 5 were again much better but final one again suffered from a lack of discipline and a good editing job.

I suspect the problem was that Tony Kushner also wrote the teleplay, making it difficult for anyone to cut out second rate material and focus only on the moments of brilliant insights. You don