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Naturally, we want television to seize the cultural high ground, but six-and-a-half hours of Angels in America (C4,Sat
and Sun) was a bit much. Half\u2011realistic, half\u2011fantastical, this award\u2011winning adaptation of Tony Kushner's epic play about the spread of Aids in America was lushly inventive, but why did they show all six episodes in two monolithic slabs?
Three very different gay New Yorkers, two of them infected, had sores and torments, but they were visited by
spirits and ghosts and angels. It was
A Christmas Carol meets Derek Jarman.
At its heart was Al Pacino's performance
of a lifetime as Roy Cohn, a corrupt, anti\u2011Communist, guttersnipe lawyer who shrivelled from roaring tyrant to dribbling invalid with cavernous cheeks, but spirit undimmed.
For two fast-moving hours words poured out in a rich, un- televisual profusion. After three hours I realised I was watching it with admiration more than involvement. In the fourth hour it seemed to be going on a bit and by the time Emma Thompson arrived as a sex- mad avenging angel I was actively wishing it would end.
A highly infectious disease also wiped out half of our population during the Black Death, but this did not stop Terry Jones arguing in Medieval Lives (BBC2, Mon) that those peasants had a much nicer time than we suppose. The more he put his case, the less convincing it sounded. It took them 50 days a year to earn enough to pay their rent and taxes, for example, whereas it takes us 80 now. Yes, but we have got running water, sewage and make-up, so it is probably worth it. Even...