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00:00The Golden Age of Television.
00:09I Love Lucy didn't just change American television, it invented American television.
00:13Back when one screen brought everyone together.
00:16Watching television was a family event.
00:19The shows that shaped us.
00:21The Brady Bunch was part of the American soul.
00:25It's timeless.
00:26The familiar faces.
00:27Ralph Cramden was loved by the Honeymooners.
00:31He was a presence.
00:33The unforgettable moments.
00:35Dynasty captured the essence of what the 1980s were about in America.
00:39These are their stories.
00:40Cheers is the pinnacle of how great the sitcom can be.
00:43This is TV We Love.
00:50The year is 1993.
00:53Bill Clinton is in the White House.
00:55Grunge is spilling out of Seattle basements.
00:58And America is halfway between analog comfort and the digital revolution.
01:03You've got mail.
01:04The internet is something you dial into.
01:07Coffeehouse culture is fueling Gen X.
01:10And everyone's dancing the Macarena.
01:13And deep in the heart of Utah, one television show is about to take flight and make television history.
01:23I have a message for you from God.
01:26Audiences love Touched by an Angel.
01:28I'm an angel.
01:30A what?
01:31Touched by an Angel was that kind of a show.
01:33Whole families could watch together.
01:35The fact that it was so overwhelmingly popular made it a phenomenon.
01:39At our height, I think we had over 28 million each week.
01:44Holy.
01:45Holy is right.
01:47And I love that.
01:48Because we talked about immigration, abortion, racism.
01:53And it did melodrama really well.
01:57There still has never been another Touched by an Angel.
02:01I love the origin story of Touched by an Angel.
02:09TV networks at that point, they were looking for something that would work for as large an audience as possible.
02:18In the mid-90s, CBS did testing that showed people were really interested in angels.
02:26And I can understand why they would think angels would be something that they could tap into as a cultural vein.
02:34So angels have always been around, and they've always been popular.
02:38Look, Daddy.
02:40Teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.
02:46That's right.
02:47In the 90s, a lot of pop stars began using angels in their shows.
02:53Tony Kushner's play, Angels in America, came out about that time.
02:59There was a book published in the early 90s by Sophie Burnham on angels, and that became a big bestseller.
03:06Tattooed wings on people's backs.
03:09It was just a cultural moment.
03:11So CBS commissioned John Macias to write a show about angels because this is what their testing showed them people were interested in watching.
03:25I remember getting a phone call from my agent.
03:33He said, I have an opportunity for you to come in and read, to play an undercover angel.
03:39I said, like, you know, is she an angel with wings?
03:45Like, is it Victoria's secret angel?
03:48Like, what kind of an angel are we talking about?
03:50He said, I don't know much more than that.
03:52Just make sure you sound American.
03:56Don't sound foreign.
03:58And so, during the conversation, after the audition, one of the producers said to me, could you try that with your Irish accent?
04:08And I thought, oh, here we go.
04:10I'll be the interesting Irish choice, but then they'll end up casting an American, you know?
04:16I started doing one of the big speeches with my Irish accent.
04:21And honestly, I could see everybody in the room leaned in.
04:26John Macius, brilliant writer, created a pilot with angels who were, shall we say, angels with dirty faces.
04:36They did one version of it that was darker than the one we know now.
04:42His version was hipper.
04:44The angels smoked and they said dumb things about the boss because people always rip on their boss.
04:50But the network thought, well, no one's going to want you to be mad at your boss if he's God.
04:54And Monica dropped from heaven into Santa Monica Bay.
04:58And that's where she got her name.
05:01Because then she meets some guys on the beach.
05:04She says, where are we?
05:08And they say, Santa Monica.
05:09And then somebody says, what's your name?
05:11Later, and she goes, uh, Monica?
05:13It was kind of dark.
05:15Della Reese's character Tess drank as an angel and dropped some language bombs.
05:21They resurrected a dead dog in the middle of the show.
05:25It was a very odd show.
05:27And they screened it for focus groups and nobody particularly liked it.
05:32It didn't test very well.
05:34But something about the idea, the premise of the show still resonated with CBS.
05:39And they brought in Martha Williamson who reconceived it.
05:41CBS started a conversation with me about an angel show because I was the angel girl.
05:49I was the lady who went to church and believed in God.
05:51And so they said, go call Martha.
05:53They gave me carte blanche at CBS to do anything I wanted to with the original pilot.
05:58And I said to them, I want to throw the whole thing out and start over.
06:02And they said, that's just fine.
06:03Throw it all out.
06:04I said, except for Della and Roma.
06:07I interviewed them.
06:09They were perfect together.
06:11It was lightning in a bottle.
06:14She totally changed the nature of the show to make it more upbeat, more wholesome, more family-oriented.
06:21I don't know what it is, but I get a good feeling about you.
06:25They said, you know what?
06:26That's where we want to go.
06:28Let's call it Touched by an Angel.
06:29I said, oh, please don't call it Touched by an Angel.
06:31That's such a weird title.
06:33But they said, we're going with Touched by an Angel.
06:35I said, all right.
06:36But then I realized later that people were touched, that they were moved.
06:42And that was my mandate.
06:44How do we move people with these shows and these scripts every week?
06:51Touched by an Angel essentially took the premise of It's a Wonderful Life and turned it into a procedural drama.
06:59It's like a cross between It's a Wonderful Life and Law and Order.
07:03The idea for Touched by an Angel was that an angel in training would be guided by an older angel to help people here on earth who were at a crossroads in their life to make a decision that would lead them closer to God.
07:17These angels were able to show up at these times of great pain and offer some light to the darkness.
07:27And God would sort of give them an assignment.
07:30They were the assignment of the week.
07:32And how am I supposed to help him then?
07:34Well, baby, the only way to share this man's pain is to share his pain.
07:41Usually the younger angel, who is played by Roma Downey, would come to a town and Della Reese, who was her guardian, would bring her into a situation where she has to help someone at a crossroads find God and find God's love.
07:57Roma was meant to be Monica.
08:01She had a long history of working in the theater in London.
08:08But she was relatively new to Hollywood.
08:16Who are you?
08:21My name is Tess, and you may call me Miss Tess.
08:27Della Reese was a big star.
08:28I got myself an angel standing here by my side.
08:35Della Reese was mostly known early on as a great singer.
08:40Had these amazing hits in the 50s.
08:43Then Della got into film and acting, and she was very funny.
08:51I know what I just said, but sometimes I don't think you have the sense God gave the goat.
08:56And I wanted to take advantage of that.
09:01I suppose we should get started.
09:03Are you ready?
09:03My agent had said, well, there's good news and there's bad news.
09:08The pilot's been picked up.
09:09And I said, great.
09:12And what's the bad news?
09:14You're moving to Salt Lake City.
09:17I didn't know anything about Salt Lake City, except I had put one of my very first posters
09:24I had on the wall of my childhood bedroom in Northern Ireland was of Donny Osmond.
09:31And Donny Osmond was from Salt Lake City.
09:34CBS wanted to shoot in Salt Lake for budgetary reasons.
09:41We didn't have much of a budget.
09:43And frankly, a lot of people really didn't have a lot of hopes for the show.
09:47So they weren't really giving us all that we needed.
09:50Touched by an angel got off to a slow start.
09:53We had an order for 13 episodes.
09:56A full order, I think, was 22.
09:59Critics, at least at the beginning, were not terribly kind.
10:02But let's remember that this program is coming out when television is starting to really have
10:09some more serious artistic ambitions.
10:12This was the dawn of the prestige TV era.
10:15We were just getting into an age where cable was showing its force.
10:19HBO, for the first time, was doing original series.
10:22And critics were starting to really gravitate towards those more complicated types of shows.
10:27Three Emmys, you're at the very top of the darn heap.
10:29Touched by an Angel was not a complicated show.
10:31It was not a critic-friendly show.
10:34One of the reviews in TV Guide was,
10:37this show will probably be off the air before you even read this.
10:43You know, we're bounced around from time slot to time slot.
10:46And it's hard for a show to pick up traction and to find a loyal audience
10:52if the audience doesn't know what night it's going to be on or what time it's going to be on.
10:56They put it Wednesday night at 9, which is sort of crazy because this is a kind of show that you would watch with the family.
11:04And you'd want your kids to come watch it because of the nice, wholesome values.
11:08So 9 was a little late.
11:10And they were about to kill it.
11:11They started airing it, but then they put a pin in it.
11:14And that pause pin is usually the kiss of death.
11:18My first commandment is, thou shalt not forgive.
11:20God does forgive.
11:21Not in L.A.
11:22To me, this was just the way it worked.
11:24Well, of course, this will get canceled.
11:25And that's just, you know, the usual way things go out here.
11:40Touched by an Angel premiered on CBS when CBS was a low-rated network.
11:44It was in third place, even fourth place at times.
11:47And they were really struggling to find their way and get a new audience.
11:51That's why Touched struggled as well, constantly moving time slots, not really finding any sort of traction.
11:58The ratings were sort of just marginal that first season.
12:02And yet Touched by an Angel started to do well in the flyover states.
12:07It became a hit in the south and in the middle of the United States before it kind of penetrated the coasts.
12:16Particularly for people of faith, there was nothing like this on television.
12:24It was almost like we were a bit of a joke.
12:29That we had a show that talked about God respectfully.
12:34You know, it wasn't the norm at that time.
12:38At any time, really.
12:39By the end of the first season of Touched, the word had gotten out that there was a show that didn't make fun of people who believed in God.
12:51And they were starting to come around the show and support it, only to discover that we were, in fact, on the bubble.
13:01There was a big campaign for people to write in and try to save the show.
13:05Fans began to write in and say how much they loved the show.
13:12You know, this was like people literally taking to writing letters, making phone calls.
13:20Save Touched by an Angel.
13:22USA Today did a big, big push to help save the show.
13:26We're so grateful to the fan base for activating.
13:31They made a lot of noise.
13:32And even though we were limping to the next green light, they would drop us another one.
13:41Okay, you can do one more.
13:44We don't know what our fate's going to be, but we're going to, you know, do our damnedest to make a great show.
13:49Then they tried us out on Saturday night on what they called America's Night of something.
13:54And it was Dr. Quinn, they had the Chuck Norris, Walker, Texas Ranger, and they had Touched by an Angel.
14:01So it was a big family night show.
14:03The second season had come and gone.
14:05It wasn't their biggest nightmare.
14:06But certainly, why keep it around?
14:09We were on the chopping block until Les Moonves came in and said, wait, something's going on here.
14:18And he saw the potential.
14:21If numbers keep growing, you find a place where to give them a chance to grow.
14:27And that wonderful soil was Sunday night at 8 o'clock.
14:31We landed in that Sunday night time slot.
14:34And then it was, it sort of all clicked.
14:37Which in hindsight makes total sense.
14:39A religious oriented show on Sunday night, of course.
14:43And I think that audience found it as well.
14:47Putting Touched by an Angel on Sunday night was sort of a slam dunk.
14:51How silly of you.
14:53Of course, people who were of that part of the audience were going to go to church, be with family, end the day by watching the show with their kids.
15:01So that really helped.
15:02Moving the time slot paid off with Touched by an Angel turning into a mega hit for CBS.
15:07And before you know it, we had 15 million people, 18 million people, 20 million people.
15:15We found a very comfortable home in the top 10 for years and years.
15:22There were even times when we beat friends and ER.
15:27Nowadays, a show can get a million people and that's considered a hit.
15:30It was really exciting, frankly, because suddenly you thought, wait, I'm on a hit.
15:36This doesn't happen very often.
15:4020 million people were watching this show every Sunday night.
15:44They were trying to reach as wide a demographic as possible because the specificity of religion was never mentioned.
15:52You know, these were not Mormon angels or Catholic angels.
15:56They were just angels.
15:58God won't let you down.
15:59The whole thing is essentially about God, but it's got nothing to do with religion.
16:04There is no doctrine.
16:07Short of a few things, God loves you.
16:09Have you got something against God?
16:11Yes.
16:12But short of that, this is not denominational.
16:16They're really careful that these are unbranded angels.
16:20It was very much a spiritual show, not necessarily a Christian show.
16:23There were so many stories that came from the personal lives and the personal passions of our writers, and they put their hearts and souls into it, and it shows up all over the screen.
16:35Action!
16:35I don't want to out them, but I'm rather sure there are heathens in the writing staff.
16:39Not everyone sort of were churchgoers.
16:43I was like the token Catholic.
16:45We had New Age people.
16:46We had Jewish people.
16:47I'm Jewish.
16:48Glenn Berenbine was Jewish.
16:49We had writers of every faith.
16:51As Martha always said, this is a show about spirituality, not religion.
16:58Hello, I'm Monica.
16:59We tried our best to be a water cooler show.
17:03You can be my age.
17:04Back off, I'm working here.
17:06You know, CBS, they didn't just want to preach to the choir.
17:09Big broadcaster, they want a broad net.
17:11They want to get everybody to watch their show.
17:14So I think they were going for a very inclusive perspective.
17:19One is black, one is white, one is young, the other is older, where almost any kind of American could feel comfortable watching it.
17:29And obviously they did, since the show at its high point was watched by 25 million people.
17:35That's astounding in today's television markets.
17:37There were other really big shows happening at the time, but the fact that Touched by an Angel was neck and neck with ER says something about what the audience wants and is hungry for.
17:52What made Touched so groundbreaking was that we did more than entertain.
17:59I know that you have the AIDS virus.
18:03Oh, my God.
18:04That we really got into some of the deep stuff that you wouldn't have expected to see at 8 o'clock on a family show on Sunday night.
18:13Help!
18:22I think audiences love Touched by an Angel because every week they knew they could see a story that was surprising.
18:31Touched by an Angel dealt with tough subjects.
18:36Our whole family could sit together and watch a TV show and talk about it and maybe bring up a subject that we wouldn't have talked about otherwise.
18:44Do you think you can hide behind this Bible or that phony smile or a white sheet?
18:49I know who you are, you hate monger.
18:52People think of it somehow as a soft show, but we dealt with very dark material.
18:59There were episodes about everything from alcoholism to divorce to death to child trafficking.
19:06We did an episode about a young man with HIV.
19:12It doesn't matter that they're HIV positive up here.
19:16I should think that it matters very much.
19:18I felt like nobody ever shied away from, you know, real important social issues.
19:25Things that were important to families.
19:27Everything from illness to, you know, alcoholism or drug addiction or suicide.
19:35You know, the things that can break a family.
19:37Detective McCovey has something to say.
19:39I don't want to hear from him.
19:41I was a cop and I shot and killed a black kid because a black guy killed my wife.
19:50And there's a speech that I give in a church saying that I was mad at all of you.
19:56And it was a black church because of that.
19:59And I'm sorry.
20:00I never thought of myself as a bigot before, but I guess I was.
20:09Good episode.
20:11We understood who was watching and we didn't want to do anything to alienate them.
20:17But we also wanted to challenge them sometimes to, you know, let's show grace to everybody.
20:26People got certain messages of encouragement and faith week after week after week.
20:32And that's such a powerful message.
20:34I think that's why people at its heart love the show.
20:38And I'll also give full credit to Roma Downey and Della Reese and John Dye.
20:42You know, it was a wonderful, magical sort of casting of these three actors who are all beautiful human beings.
20:50And that came across on screen.
20:53Roma Downey was beautiful, but not sexy, which made her attractive to women as much as she might have been to men.
21:05And she was such a gentle character that kids could probably relate to her very easily.
21:12You know, sometimes, Joey, you have to remember the bad things so that you can learn from them.
21:17So Roma Downey grew up in Northern Ireland and had a very, very hardscrabble childhood.
21:26I think maybe because of that difficult childhood, the struggles just to survive, she always has had this generosity of spirit and sweetness.
21:37She was just graceful.
21:40Like, it just oozed out of her, the gracefulness.
21:44And that's how Roma Downey is.
21:47She lives that way, too.
21:49My son was like two, and Roma's daughter was about the same age.
21:52So sometimes her nanny would come and say,
21:54but these kids, my son could go play in their trailer with her daughter because the kids were bored.
21:58And so Roma had a very, like, motherly, this is a family situation thing.
22:03And I think that really resonated with everybody for a long time.
22:06I had my daughter on the series.
22:11I'm sure my pregnancy was a challenge.
22:16You know, many other shows they can write into that the character gets pregnant,
22:22but it really wasn't an option on Touched by an Angel.
22:25I carried very large sun hats.
22:29I carried big bags of shopping.
22:31I was standing behind car doors.
22:34I was leaning over couches.
22:36Sit. Sit.
22:37Commander, could you help me out here?
22:40Even though we thought we were being so clever,
22:43you know, my face was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
22:50There was real chemistry between Roma and Della.
22:53And people could see that, I think.
22:57Della with her big, you know, the higher the hair, the closer to God, right?
23:03Roma and Della.
23:05There was a real mother-daughter relationship.
23:10Are you all right?
23:12A little bit.
23:13Roma lost her mother very early as a child.
23:16And Della is just Earth mother to all.
23:20And the two of them had something special that had to be written to.
23:25Della Reese became like a mother to me.
23:28Oh, baby.
23:30There is great joy.
23:32Great joy.
23:33But God told us there'd be days like this, too.
23:37I loved her with all of my heart.
23:39Our friendship lasted right up to the very end.
23:43The moment she hit the set, it was always, well, hello, everybody.
23:50And there's this prayer.
23:52And she had this immense energy that was incredibly embracing.
23:57The way she treated us was how she ended up showing up in the scripts as well.
24:07And we wanted that authority figure.
24:09She was the supervisor.
24:11So you listen to me.
24:13Are you listening?
24:14Later when I met my husband, Mark Burnett, I warned him.
24:19I said, she's not a handshaker.
24:21She's going to give you a hug, so be prepared.
24:23She said, that's my baby girl, and if you hurt her, I will have you killed.
24:30And he started to laugh, you know, because he thought it was dark humor.
24:33And she said, oh, no, I'm not kidding.
24:36Della is Della.
24:37What you saw on the screen was Della.
24:43And John, when he was added to the show in the third season, as the Angel of Death, he fit in very nicely.
24:50I mean, Della and Roma and John were a trio.
24:52You are looking good.
24:55No, baby.
24:56You know that you're the one who looks good.
24:59Come on, baby.
25:00We got work to do.
25:01John Dye.
25:03How perfect of a name is that for the Angel of Death?
25:06And I think part of what made John work as the Angel of Death was his instinct that death is not something to be terrified of.
25:16It is a natural culmination of life.
25:19And I think he was able to capture that.
25:22He was a true Southern gentleman.
25:26He was easy on the eyes.
25:28And, you know, you could only hope when your time comes that as lovely an Angel as John Dye would show up for you.
25:37John and I used to crack up all the time and tell jokes together.
25:41We'd look at these scripts and we'd go, wow, really?
25:44That's kind of corny, isn't it?
25:47A little corny.
25:47What are we going to do with this?
25:49And he just became the third member of our family.
25:53So Touched by an Angel had a relatively small ensemble cast of our Angels.
25:59But what that gave us was unbelievably big casting opportunities for our guest stars.
26:07When you look back now at Touched by an Angel, you'll be astounded by the kind of A-list talent that were part of that roster.
26:28Folks like Bryan Cranston.
26:30He's still going to have to spend some time up in psychiatric.
26:33What?
26:34We had brand new stars to be.
26:37We had Brie Larson.
26:39Still, he lives in the boys' dormitory.
26:42James Marsden.
26:43You can't do that.
26:44Oh, no?
26:45Who's going to stop me?
26:47Pedro Pascal.
26:48What are you doing here?
26:51Aren't you a little old?
26:52Watch it, buster.
26:53America Ferrara.
26:55And you think, oh my gosh, I worked with Jack Black when he was just like, you know, a kid.
27:01Really, never mind.
27:01Hey.
27:04We had movie stars on Touched by an Angel.
27:13Kirk Douglas.
27:14There will be a Bob Mitchell today.
27:19Mine.
27:20And we say, really?
27:22Are you going to do this?
27:24Are you sure?
27:24It's jaw-dropping.
27:26We had A-list stars.
27:29Carol Burnett.
27:30Debbie Reynolds.
27:31Ernest Borgnine.
27:33Debbie Allen.
27:34Oscar-winning people.
27:36Rita Moreno.
27:37It's so good to be back.
27:39And it wasn't just, you know, like a good payday for them.
27:43Hello.
27:44It's because they wanted to be on.
27:45But they had other people.
27:46Long lists of unlikely and sometimes very interesting guest stars.
27:52Like Muhammad Ali.
27:53What's going on?
27:54Mr. Ali is a friend of ours, Tim.
27:57We had this wonderful opportunity to call people up and say, we want to do something with you.
28:03What do you care about?
28:05We went to Muhammad Ali.
28:08And he said, bullying.
28:10Strength is not just about muscle.
28:13You have to know what you're fighting for.
28:16Big actors, big athletes, big celebrities were open to hearing from us.
28:21We had Dr. Maya Angelou.
28:24She just took my breath away.
28:26Talk about a legacy.
28:27Maya Angelou wrote a poem just for our episode called Touched by an Angel.
28:36Love costs all that we are and all that we hope to be.
28:42Yet it is only love which sets us free.
28:45A lot of secular actors wanted to be on a show that had 25 million people watching it.
28:53It was great exposure.
28:54It was a quick commitment.
28:55They weren't coming on for like an extended arc.
28:58It was a one-shot deal.
29:00Every week is a new case.
29:01I love the fact that every week Touched by an Angel was set in a different location.
29:05It gave you as a writer a chance to explore entirely different worlds.
29:10We never had the same set from week to week to week.
29:15And that was a huge challenge.
29:17The challenges were we were in Salt Lake City.
29:20And so it was like, okay, how can you make Salt Lake City look like New Orleans or look like the Sudan?
29:27One week we were shooting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
29:32The next week we were shooting Sally Ride in Space.
29:35We took one street of Salt Lake City and turned it into Beijing.
29:41And it worked.
29:42I mean, it worked beautifully.
29:43The biggest challenge was always, can we keep the mountains out of the shot?
29:47Because once you saw mountains, that restricted you a lot.
29:51But Salt Lake City was amazingly versatile.
29:54And we did, well, we did over 200 episodes.
29:57We believed on the show that every episode needed a really good cry.
30:05And we wanted to guarantee that in every episode.
30:07We had a classic four-act structure.
30:10And if you know that at the end of Acts 3, the dark night of the soul for your hero,
30:15someone dies, someone is in deep distress, you can work backwards and build story from that point.
30:21There was always that moment where the angel revealed herself.
30:27Who are you?
30:29I'm an angel.
30:31A what?
30:32And it was sort of the heart and soul of each of the episodes.
30:36Whatever I had been wearing, it would change miraculously.
30:40Monica?
30:40Now I was wearing some sort of white dress, white and flowy.
30:45I had a little bit of extra light.
30:47Holy.
30:48Holy is right.
30:49And it was kind of an ethereal moment.
30:53You could pick any episode.
30:55Act 4, when the lights, the heavenly lights would shine over the angels.
31:00And there was a radiant glow behind her.
31:03As we in the room said, the glow job scene.
31:07You're telling me you're an angel?
31:11The revelation scene was the big moment on every show.
31:16It was a deeply meaningful scene and moment.
31:21That it was emotionally fulfilling to an audience to be weeping.
31:25Hopefully not because it was a terrible episode, but because it was emotionally moving.
31:31If you can get people to laugh, cry, or have their emotions swell, that's a really effective way to do television.
31:39The revelation scene did that every time.
31:50You sound like you got a real good case of the blues.
31:54We used music in a way that most shows never did.
31:58I remember street jamming with Justin Timberlake.
32:07It was always such an important part of it.
32:13From our opening song, Walk With You, sang by our great Della Reese herself.
32:22And Della got to sing in quite a few episodes.
32:26Music always woven so skillfully.
32:31Martha's always loved music.
32:33And loved bringing music into the show and hiring guest stars who were musical performers.
32:39We had a tragedy once where our guest star could not show up.
32:44And we had to scramble and rewrite a show over the weekend.
32:50And I went to Della and I said, Della, can you sing as many songs as I throw at you?
32:55And she says, yeah, and we'll bring in my friends too.
32:57And we did a show with Della Reese, B.B. King, Dr. John, Al Hurt, Hal Linden.
33:05And it was one of our best shows ever.
33:11Oh, yeah.
33:15There was a lot of music in Touched by an Angel, but not all just because of Della.
33:19We did have country music stars come to us because they felt that was also their audience.
33:24Wynonna was one of all of our favorites.
33:28It was our 100th episode that we filmed with her that was so powerful and poignant.
33:35Happy birthday to you.
33:39CBS wanted to do something special, of course, for the 100th episode.
33:43And it was always on my mind.
33:45It would be a songwriter who was struggling with something in her life.
33:50What would be the worst thing you could imagine is losing your own child.
33:54This is it, Monica.
33:56You're going to lose my baby.
33:58One of his wishes was to meet Celine Dion.
34:00And we actually went to Canada and worked with Celine.
34:04One of the great moments of our lives.
34:06And the last thing he really wanted was to see his mother write the song that had been in her head for so long and to complete that song.
34:15All the colors of the rainbow.
34:18And at the very end of the show had that song singing just as that little boy went to heaven.
34:25And he broke all of our hearts.
34:28And it was really so deeply touching.
34:32And to this day, if I catch a glimpse of that episode, it really just made me cry.
34:40Do you know what it's like to get two superstars, Wynonna Judd and Celine Dion, to agree to be on the same show at the same time?
34:49And it was great to celebrate that we had gone that far, especially the first two seasons, not sure the show's going to get canceled and tend to earn the 100th episode.
34:57It's a beautiful thing.
34:58When Valerie joined us very late in the show, she was just a breath of fresh air.
35:12We needed a real shot in the arm.
35:14Valerie Bertinelli, my goodness.
35:16I mean, she was America's sweetheart for so many years.
35:20And she played a brand new angel who had just been created.
35:24I'm homesick.
35:25I know, baby, but you've got a job to do here.
35:28I really enjoyed working with Val, who played the role of Gloria.
35:34I was excited when Valerie Bertinelli was going to join the show because, of course, she was bringing a whole new audience to the show who might not have been paying attention to it.
35:41But she was very open and wonderful.
35:43And I think she brought that honesty to her character.
35:47As with all television shows...
35:49It's going to be worse than I thought.
35:52Yes.
35:54We'd better get going.
35:55There's an end date.
36:00There is business aspects of the decision, audience size aspects of the decision.
36:06I just think it was ultimately time for it to go and for it to end.
36:11CBS had just bought Sunday night football.
36:16And they kept running overtime.
36:18And that became difficult and unpredictable.
36:21People were saying, is it touched on?
36:24Is it not on?
36:24So it became a logistical problem as well.
36:27There was a sweetness and a sadness to it ending up.
36:32Really, because we had all been on it so long.
36:35We had all become such a family.
36:37You know, I think everything runs its course.
36:42It was the dream job.
36:43It was getting to write for female characters who had something important to say.
36:47And it spoke to me that America loves having this place in their entertainment menu, that they welcome this.
37:00It was deeply satisfying to have the success of Touched by an Angel demonstrated week after week.
37:07I think it was over 200 and something episodes we made, and maybe it was time to hang it up.
37:14But there was a lot of tears, of course, saying goodbye.
37:21And so we knew that we were kind of winding down, and it might be time to say, let's take a look at where we're headed.
37:28So we weren't canceled.
37:30You can't cancel God.
37:31But it was really by a beautiful and lovely mutual agreement with the folks at CBS.
37:37It was time to say goodbye.
37:51I think Touched by an Angel does still resonate 30 years on.
37:58Because the timelessness of the core message will never go away.
38:03All of us need to believe in ourselves, and to believe in our community, and to realize that all of us have the ability to make change.
38:11And that's what they told people on a weekly basis.
38:13You don't think things are good in your life now.
38:16I'm here to tell you, you can find a way to fix it, and I will support you.
38:20That's huge.
38:21Touched by an Angel revealed that even when we thought the era of being able to pull off such an earnest, sincere, completely non-ironic program was over.
38:36Touched by an Angel proved that you could not only do that stuff, but people liked it.
38:41Even though critics might have a hard time celebrating schmaltz, sometimes schmaltz, if done well, can actually be interesting.
38:49Along comes a show that was about faith and morals.
38:54This was slightly religious and obviously had an audience that really embraced it as something a little different than what else was on TV in that age of sarcasm.
39:05And I think that's one reason why it did quite well at the time.
39:09And it did melodrama really well.
39:13I don't care what people say, sometimes a good, manipulated cry is just what the doctor ordered.
39:19We had a very unique show.
39:22Nobody ever quite knew what to do with it or how to categorize it, and that's okay.
39:28With all due respect to the members of the press, it was your profession that really has been the least kind to us.
39:34But the people, in spite of what you wrote about us initially, have continued to watch and have watched in great numbers.
39:41There were a lot of people who could have made a lot of fun, and they didn't.
39:46Touched by an Angel was two female leads, and that was an important example of how female leads could actually carry a spiritual primetime drama.
39:55Where up until then, we'd seen mostly men like Michael Landon, Highway to Heaven, as stars of these kinds of shows.
40:02So it did break new ground to that degree, and that was pretty astounding.
40:07Very uncommon to have not one, but two female leads.
40:12And very uncommon to have female characters that like each other.
40:18Indeed, not just like each other, but loved each other.
40:21Excuse me.
40:22And so I think that gave it a particular heartbeat.
40:27I mean, they were two women running a one-hour drama for all that time.
40:32That was a big deal.
40:33It seems almost every season, someone's trying, God friended me.
40:37You know, God is my best friend. Where's God?
40:40There's so many shows that try to get that secret sauce that Touched by an Angel has.
40:45And that's part of its legacy.
40:49Perhaps the biggest impact on me personally was the fact that it saved lives.
40:59And I am not hyperbolic about this.
41:02We received letters from people saying, I was going to do myself harm.
41:06And I heard that message on television.
41:09And I called for help.
41:11I called a suicide hotline.
41:14To see in writing, the show changed my life.
41:19The show's helped us have a conversation in our family to address our mother's alcoholism.
41:25No! I haven't had enough!
41:28This helps me heal from the suicide of my child.
41:32Like, these were real people sharing the real impacts of a TV show on their lives.
41:39What other show has done that?
41:44That's a massive thing to me.
41:46So Touched by an Angel does have a legacy.
41:48God has given you a second chance. Take it.
41:51It's a legacy of individuals whose lives have been changed for the better.
41:55It's a legacy of individuals whose lives have been changed for the better.
42:00A eso's been a trauma for a bigger radiation.
42:02That's контуры.
42:03And over to other people who had visited their lives.
42:07So far back to all the new identified bio, it blows up.
42:12Let us know.
42:14We'll see someone else you can do, too!
42:16This is% usando Sandra C Jama.
42:17That's not what I'm indicating for the bigot problem.
42:19This doesn't give me a time for a meeting.
42:20Quite soon.
42:21About our talk, now.
42:22Let us know what our body has been changed.
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