"Angels Are So Few" was the fourth play to be broadcast by the BBC as part of its "Play For Today" series, and the first in that series written by Dennis Potter, one of Britain's best-known television playwrights. A young man appears in a London suburban street. Although it is winter he is dressed only in tattered old clothes and sandals; he also wears the long hair and prominent sideburns which were fashionable among young men in the sixties and seventies. He calls himself simply "Michael", although when pressed he admits that his surname is Biddle. Potter's title derives from an old song which declares "You may not be an angel, 'Cause angels are so few, But until the day that one comes along, I'll string along with you", and Michael is someone who may- or may not- be an angel.
Michael certainly claims that he is an angel, sent to bring the Word of God to the London suburbs. For much of the time the Word of God seems to consist of standard hippie-speak about love and peace, about seeing the beauty in nature and about living for the day, but he sometimes reminds us that the Word of God, at least in traditional Christian thought, can be as much about wrath as about love. There is also a dark, sinister side to Michael's personality; two people who cross him die soon after. (A postman is killed when his van collides with a lorry and an old man drops dead of a heart attack). There is, however, a suggestion that these deaths may be no more than a fantasy on Michael's part.
The main strand of the plot details Michael's relationship with a thirty-something housewife named Cynthia Nicholls. Cynthia does not really go along with Michael's claim to be an angel, but as she is trapped in an unhappy marriage to her dull, Puritanical husband, Richard, she is ready to welcome any new man into her life, even a scruffily dressed eccentric who appears to have mental health issues. Or, in the words of the song, she will string along with Michael until a real angel comes along. When she attempts to seduce him, however, she discovers that he is, in his own way, just as prudish as Richard.
I don't think that Potter intended us to believe that Michael is an angel in sense of a being sent to Earth by God. That does not, however, mean that we have to accept the play on a purely literal level as a social-realist drama about the relationship between a frustrated housewife and a deluded tramp. We can, if we wish, accept the play on that level, but that is not the only possible interpretation. The word "angel" derives from the Greek for "messenger", and for all his weirdness, Michael can be seen as a man with a message for a complacent, repressed and materialistic society, what he would call a "spiritless, defunct land". He is a suburban John the Baptist, a voice crying in a wilderness of pebble-dashed houses and neatly trimmed privet hedges, a social outsider reminding social insiders of things they might prefer to forget. It is a role which demands, and gets, a fine performance from Tom Bell who is able to capture all the many sides of this strange character.
This was perhaps the first of the great "Plays for Today". As far as I am aware, Potter was not himself a religious believer, yet he was well aware of the importance of religious ideas in society. "Angels Are So Few" is not a religious play, in the sense of a drama written to evangelise on behalf of the Christian faith, and yet it is a play about religion, one which deals with the themes of faith, life, death and spirituality, even if it does so in a secular rather than a conventionally Christian way. It is a shame that it does not seem to have been repeated on the BBC since its first showing in November 1970. 8/10.
Michael certainly claims that he is an angel, sent to bring the Word of God to the London suburbs. For much of the time the Word of God seems to consist of standard hippie-speak about love and peace, about seeing the beauty in nature and about living for the day, but he sometimes reminds us that the Word of God, at least in traditional Christian thought, can be as much about wrath as about love. There is also a dark, sinister side to Michael's personality; two people who cross him die soon after. (A postman is killed when his van collides with a lorry and an old man drops dead of a heart attack). There is, however, a suggestion that these deaths may be no more than a fantasy on Michael's part.
The main strand of the plot details Michael's relationship with a thirty-something housewife named Cynthia Nicholls. Cynthia does not really go along with Michael's claim to be an angel, but as she is trapped in an unhappy marriage to her dull, Puritanical husband, Richard, she is ready to welcome any new man into her life, even a scruffily dressed eccentric who appears to have mental health issues. Or, in the words of the song, she will string along with Michael until a real angel comes along. When she attempts to seduce him, however, she discovers that he is, in his own way, just as prudish as Richard.
I don't think that Potter intended us to believe that Michael is an angel in sense of a being sent to Earth by God. That does not, however, mean that we have to accept the play on a purely literal level as a social-realist drama about the relationship between a frustrated housewife and a deluded tramp. We can, if we wish, accept the play on that level, but that is not the only possible interpretation. The word "angel" derives from the Greek for "messenger", and for all his weirdness, Michael can be seen as a man with a message for a complacent, repressed and materialistic society, what he would call a "spiritless, defunct land". He is a suburban John the Baptist, a voice crying in a wilderness of pebble-dashed houses and neatly trimmed privet hedges, a social outsider reminding social insiders of things they might prefer to forget. It is a role which demands, and gets, a fine performance from Tom Bell who is able to capture all the many sides of this strange character.
This was perhaps the first of the great "Plays for Today". As far as I am aware, Potter was not himself a religious believer, yet he was well aware of the importance of religious ideas in society. "Angels Are So Few" is not a religious play, in the sense of a drama written to evangelise on behalf of the Christian faith, and yet it is a play about religion, one which deals with the themes of faith, life, death and spirituality, even if it does so in a secular rather than a conventionally Christian way. It is a shame that it does not seem to have been repeated on the BBC since its first showing in November 1970. 8/10.
