By null, Times TV CriticCBS's long-running Touched by an Angel ends its run, having once made television a home for spiritual themes.
Just ask any TV expert: When it comes to television series, a life span of nine months is an achievement. So don't read too much into the fact that tonight marks the beginning of the end for CBS's religious drama Touched by an Angel, which wraps up after nine seasons in a two-episode finale that concludes Sunday night.
"I calculate the life span of TV shows by dog years plus two," said Robert Thompson, head of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, concluding that Touched is verging on 65 years old under his somewhat unorthodox analysis.
"Its popularity is overwhelmed by the age of the show."
Indeed, Touched by an Angel - long viewed as a curious success fueled by the aging audience of 60 Minutes on Sundays - became a TV relic in recent years, offering stories on the power of God's love while its network was raking in millions exposing people's venality on shows such as Survivor and CSI.
But at a time when the world seems fractured by religious conflicts and unstable as ever, there would seem to be no better time for a show that dramatizes the influence of angels in the lives of everyday folks.
So why is Touched by an Angel leaving the TV universe?
"This is a business of ratings," said co-star Della Reese of the show, which once ranked as TV's second-highest-rated drama, but now places 97th among network series two years after moving to Saturdays, scoring just above already-canceled CBS shows Queens Supreme and Robbery Homicide Division.
"When the show was on Sunday, we were a (program) that people came home and extended their Sunday services with," said Reese, 71, a minister who leads the Understanding Principles for Better Living Church in Los Angeles. "People are out on Saturday nights. It changed our audience base."
Still, experts say the show's TV legacy is undeniable.
"(Touched) broke barriers to having an openly spiritualized, fictionalized story in prime time," said John Rash, senior vice president and director of broadcast negotiations at Campbell Mithun, a Minneapolis advertising agency.
"Americans seem more comfortable with spirituality, as opposed to specific denominational characterizations," Rash said. "The angels were nondenominational and represented a broad, Judeo-Christian ethic. Touched by an Angel managed to be both compelling, but also nonthreatening, to most viewers."
In other words, Touched's blend of religious fealty, open-minded values (some shows centered on accepting ethnic diversity and gay people) and vague theology helped the program walk a thin tightrope between all types of Christian faiths in America.
Executive producer Martha Williamson (The Facts of Life) adapted Touched by an Angel in 1993 from a much darker vision advanced by producer John Masius (St. Elsewhere, Providence). Few thought Masius' original vision could succeed - not even Reese, who filmed the first, ill-fated pilot with co-star Roma Downey in 1993.
"I was an angel who had a cigarette habit . . . a chain smoker. Roma and I disliked each other. It was a really hateful script," said Reese, who only took the job because it paid well and she could vacation with her husband in Wilmington, N.C. "I was operating under the impression that this would never sell . . . and it didn't."
CBS rejected the pilot, commissioning Williamson to create a more friendly series capitalizing on the public's short-lived fascination with angels. Williamson, a devout Christian, recast show-biz vet Reese and TV movie actor Downey as Tess and Monica, compassionate angels dispatched to Earth to help people who find themselves at a crossroads.
Reese, who had watched TV executives plan story lines minutes after co-star Redd Foxx died during a rehearsal for the CBS series The Royal Family, initially wasn't interested in signing on to Williamson's vision. Then, with her husband urging her to take the part, Reese consulted her most important adviser.
"I prayed . . . and I remember God's words: He said, "Do this for me, and you can retire,' " she said. "What better word can you get?"
At first, the show's performance was anything but heavenly. Debuting Thursdays at 8 p.m. in 1994, Touched's first run of 13 episodes ranked 77th. Fearing the heavy hand of cancellation, Williamson hit religious shows such as The 700 Club to persuade CBS to keep the show alive.
A move in fall 1996 to Sundays exploded the show's viewership, funneling the tremendous (and older-skewing) audience of 60 Minutes into a series that proved the perfect bridge to the network's once-popular made-for-TV movies.
"For a long time, when the least objectionable programming philosophy was the norm, religion remained the last frontier . . . the last place networks feared to tread," said Syracuse University's Thompson, noting that even NBC's series about an angel on Earth, Michael Landon's 1984 drama Highway to Heaven, was much vaguer about its celestial connections than Touched by an Angel.
"Angel took the concept of Highway to Heaven and made it much more specific," he said. "And now that (TV executives) realize people don't nearly have the problem with this stuff they originally thought, you see it much more often."
True enough, series such as The Practice, Oz, NYPD Blue and The Sopranos have recently juggled story lines on religion, faith and prayer. But there remains a serious dearth of programs that focus on religion or religious concepts. Series born during the '90s angel boom such as Nothing Sacred, Teen Angel, Soul Man and Cupid are long gone, with the WB's 7th Heaven, about a minister's family, remaining the sole survivor.
"It's surprising in a country where 50 percent of the people proclaim regular church attendance, that there are not more TV references - let alone series - that deal directly with Americans' spiritual lives," said Campbell Mithun's Rash. "Nearly any program that characterizes a person of the cloth in a specific fashion, such as Nothing Sacred or Miracles, brings out more controversy and potentially alienates viewers."
TV fan Angela Mitchell fears Touched by an Angel's departure can be linked to troubles experienced by other so-called genre shows - series that feature occurrences outside conventional reality - including the SciFi series Farscape (canceled), the horror/action show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in its final season), the superhero show Birds of Prey (canceled), the Buffy spin-off Angel (questionable) and her favorite, ABC's darkly spiritual adventure show, Miracles.
From her home in Hollywood (Florida, not California), Mitchell has helped lead a fan drive to save Miracles, which stars Skeet Ulrich as an investigator of miracles who begins to realize the devil may be causing some of them.
Mitchell wondered if Miracles' spiritual component has doomed it in a way that has also hobbled Touched by an Angel.
"In this new (TV) climate, it seems the bigger the issue, the less likely a show will succeed," said Mitchell, who has joined other fans in taking out an ad to support the show in next week's Daily Variety. "I like a show that will let me think about big issues, but let me think about them in a comfortable environment. I wonder, if Touched by an Angel were a new show, could it succeed in this environment?"
Touched by an Angel's finale reveals how the series navigated such tricky territory, featuring Downey's Monica up for promotion to Tess' position as a supervisor of angels. But she must first face a final, challenging case: helping the town of Ascension recover from a school boiler explosion that killed all of the area's children.
Longtime fans will find a long procession of guest stars returning to the show for a final fling, including Patrick Duffy, Randy Travis, Cloris Leachman, Paul Winfield, Marion Ross and Patty Duke.
Scott Bairstow is the mysterious drifter who winds up accused of causing the explosion; M*A*S*H alum David Ogden Stiers is Satan, incarnated as a charismatic attorney. (How appropriate is that?)
As you might expect, the conclusion plays on issues of redemption and sacrifice that Christians know well. And the lessons come by personifying figures such as the Angel of Death, Satan and even God in ways the viewer might not expect.
"We didn't deal in religion, we dealt in spirituality," said Reese. "When Sept. 11 came, we were (one of) the only shows around that didn't have something to do with murder or war or horrendous situations. When we started, there was only T&A (on TV)."
Touched by an Angel also is one of the last surviving series to employ CBS's old formula for TV drama - which builds a show around an established older star, surrounded by younger faces, revolving around a open-ended concept that allows the network to plug in a succession of guest stars, Love Boat-style (Craig T. Nelson's Saturday cop show, The District, fits this form).
Classic series, from Diagnosis Murder to Murder She Wrote and Walker, Texas Ranger have used the same setup - which brought strong audiences for years, but more recently has guaranteed the kind of older, female-skewing audiences most big-ticket advertisers don't value.
So it's no surprise that Touched's overtly religious themes and old school formatting might seem quaint stacked next to the crackling police dramas and reality shows now filling CBS's schedule.
"Any drama has a hard time adding viewers in its later seasons," noted Campbell Mithun's Rash. "This show has the additional chronological challenge of airing on Saturday night on CBS, traditionally one of the least-attractive time periods for younger viewers. The show has aged, and its audience has come along with it."
Years past a well-publicized dispute with producers over her salary and open about the fact that she and Williamson didn't always see eye to eye, Reese already seems ready to move on (she only appears in a handful of scenes in the show's finale).
"Nine years of one character . . . thinking the same thoughts, progressing the same way, doesn't give you much room to do other things," she said. "Don't get me wrong, it was a blessing. But it's like the old hymn, "Free at last, free at last . . . thank God almighty, I'm free at last."'
AT A GLANCE: Touched by an Angel's series finale airs at 8 tonight and Sunday, on WTSP-Ch. 10. Grade: B+. Rating: TV-PG.