Kushner exquisitely adapts his two-part award-winning play into this six-part miniseries that vividly intertwines the lives and sufferings of several New Yorkers as they grapple with such issues as AIDS, drug addiction, homosexuality, and abandonment during the mid-80s. Masterfully directed by Nichols, it presents a spiritual perspective featuring Thompson as an angel of mercy to a man dying of AIDS while Streep appears as an apparition to another.