Angel is an American supernatural drama television series, a spinoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series was created by Buffys creator, writer and director Joss Whedon, in collaboration with David Greenwalt. It aired on The WB from October 5, 1999, to May 19, 2004, consisting of five seasons and 110 episodes. Like Buffy, it was produced by Whedon's production company, Mutant Enemy.
The show details the ongoing trials of Angel, a vampire whose human soul was restored to him by a Romani curse as a punishment for the murder of one of their own. After more than a century of murder and the torture of innocents, Angel's restored soul torments him with guilt and remorse. Angel moves to Los Angeles, California, after it is clear that his doomed relationship with Buffy, the vampire slayer, cannot continue. For the majority of the show, he works as a private detective in Los Angeles, where he and a variety of associates work to "help the helpless", restoring the faith and saving the souls of those who have lost their way.In episode "Darla", Cordelia says: "Angel Investigations, we help the hopeless." While regularly struggling with his own vampiric nature, he simultaneously battles against demons and humans aligned with them throughout the story. Angel's archnemesis for most of the series is Wolfram & Hart, a preeminent yet malevolent global law firm that is secretly a front for powerful demonic forces.
The show is considered by many critics as one of the best TV spin-off series of all time, with praise for its darker tone, characters and performances.
Characters
The series focuses on Angel (David Boreanaz), an Irish vampire who is over 240 years old. Angel was known as Angelus during his rampages across Europe, but was cursed with a soul, which gave him a conscience and guilt for centuries of murder and torture. He left Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the end of season 3 to move to Los Angeles in search of redemption.
He soon finds himself assisted by Allen Francis Doyle (Glenn Quinn), another Irish character who is a half-human, half-demon who, although he comes across as a ne'er-do-well hustler, has a heroic side. Doyle serves to pass along cryptic visions from The Powers That Be to Angel. They are soon joined by Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), also a previous cast member of Buffy. Formerly a popular high school cheerleader of Sunnydale High, Cordelia starts her tenure on the show as a more vain and self-centered personality, but grows over the course of the series into a hero. Cordelia acquires Doyle's visions via a shared kiss prior to Doyle's death. With the death of Doyle in the ninth episode of the show's first season, another character from the Buffy series makes the jump to its spinoff: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (Alexis Denisof) joins the team under the brave guise of "rogue demon hunter," acting as comic relief and initially not well accepted. Over time, Wesley shows bravery and strength as well as some cold-blooded killing ability, like his colleague Rupert Giles, and grows into a leader.
In season 2 of the show, Angel, Cordelia and Wesley are joined by Charles Gunn (J. August Richards), a young demon hunter who must initially adjust to working with and for a vampire. At the end of season 2, they travel to the demon world Pylea, where they save Winifred "Fred" Burkle (Amy Acker), a young Texan physicist whose social skills have become stunted after five years' captivity; she later grows to become more outspoken. Season 3 saw the introduction of Connor (Vincent Kartheiser), the "miracle" human-like child of two vampires, Angel and Darla. Abducted into a Hell dimension as a baby, he is raised by Angel's enemy Daniel Holtz, and only a few weeks after he left comes back as a teenager and reluctantly comes to accept his lineage. Although introduced during season 2, Lorne (Andy Hallett) joins the team during season 3. An outgoing, pacifist demon with prophetic and empathic abilities, Lorne's role is predominantly to support the team.
Season 5, the show's final season, introduces several new cast members, chief amongst them Spike (James Marsters), an old vampire ally/foe of Angel's who also starred in Buffy. In this series, Spike reluctantly fights beside Angel as their rivalry continues—now tinged with Spike existing as another vampire with a soul, and by the romantic feelings that both of them have for Buffy Summers. One of the legendary Old Ones, Illyria (Amy Acker) starts off as an adversary of the team after taking over Fred's body, but comes to join the team as she must learn to cope with the changed world and the new emotions she feels as a result of taking over a human. Finally, there's Harmony Kendall (Mercedes McNab), another Buffy alumna and former friend of Cordelia who was turned into a vampire. Resembling the old personality of Cordelia, Harmony is grudgingly accepted by Angel as his secretary when he takes over the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart.
Many characters on Angel made recurring appearances. The two longest-running recurring characters are Lilah Morgan (Seasons 1–4) and Lindsey McDonald (Seasons 1, 2, and 5), appearing in 36 and 21 episodes, respectively; Lindsey is the only character besides Angel to appear in both the first and last episode of the series. Angel's sire Darla (Julie Benz), first seen in Buffy, plays an expanded role on Angel and appears in 20 episodes over the course of the series. Elisabeth Röhm appears in 15 episodes (Seasons 1–2) as LAPD Detective Kate Lockley, a woman with an often-strained relationship with Angel.
Throughout the series, there were also guest appearances from Buffy characters, including main cast members Buffy Summers, Willow Rosenberg and Daniel "Oz" Osbourne. The rogue slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku) played an important part in episodes of Seasons 1, 2, and 4; Anne Steele and Andrew Wells also originated on Buffy and appeared in two or more Angel episodes. Whedon also used two actors from his cancelled television series Firefly, Gina Torres and Adam Baldwin, to play Jasmine and Marcus Hamilton, respectively.
Setting and filming locations Much of Angel was shot on location in Los Angeles, where it is also set.Various authors, "", The Ultimate Buffy and Angel Trivia Guide (updated 2006). "Los Angeles" are the first words spoken in the premiere episode,Episode, "City of", Angel (1999). Angel says: "Los Angeles. You see it at night and it shines. Like a beacon. People are drawn to it. People and other things. They come for all sorts of reasons." and the cityscape is the first image seen in the opening credits. Joss Whedon said, "It is set in Los Angeles because there are a lot of demons in L.A. and a wealth of stories to be told." Producer Marti Noxon has expanded on this explanation: "Los Angeles was the place that Joss Whedon picked for very specific reasons. There's a lot of preconceptions about what the place is, but there are a lot of truths. It's a pretty competitive, intense town, where a lot of lonely, isolated, and desperate people end up. It's a good place for monsters."Topping, Keith, Hollywood Vampire, (3rd edition, includes Season 4) Virgin Books (2004), page 1. Many episodes feature references to the city, and the opening episode of the second season features Lorne offering this observation of the city:
In the essay, "Los Angeles: The City of Angel" (from the essay collection, Reading Angel: The TV Spin-off With a Soul), Benjamin Jacob explores why Los Angeles in particular should be important to the series. Jacob suggests several explanations: first, the name connection ('City of Angels'); second, the double-sided nature, the "other side of the stereotypical sunshine city, Beach Boys and Walt Disney", "the place of pain, anonymity, alienation and broken dreams".;Jacob, Benjamin, "Los Angelus: The City of Angel", from Abbot, Stacey (editor), Reading Angel, I. B. Tauris (September 22, 2005), page 77 third, American noir was originally a "Los Angelian genre".Jacob, Benjamin, "Los Angelus: The City of Angel", from Abbot, Stacey (editor), Reading Angel, I. B. Tauris (September 22, 2005), page 80. Angel was originally conceived as supernatural noir. Noir had continued investigation of the "dark city, a place of regression and darkness as a counterpoint to the city's promise of progress and civilization" that had begun under William Blake and Charles Dickens.Jacob, Benjamin, "Los Angelus: The City of Angel", from Abbot, Stacey (editor), Reading Angel, I. B. Tauris (September 22, 2005), page 83.
During Season 1, Angel Investigations is based in Angel's apartment. Actor Alexis Denisof, who played Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, said: "Angel had this dark, foreboding, underground cellar apartment with columns, with this antique furniture all around, and this pokey little office upstairs"""Inside the Agency" featurette Angel Season 2 DVD set, disc 3 (2002). These offices were blown up at the climax of the first season, and Angel Investigations found a new base in the episode "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been".
Production designer Stuart Blatt outlined the new base: "An old hotel, something [the writers] could use to evoke the past of Los Angeles and some of Angel's history, something kind of creepy and spooky but not too dark because they didn't want something depressing, it's called the Hyperion Hotel. It's based on many hotels in Los Angeles... Angel lived in a larger suite in the hotel, like a honeymoon suite, the producers wanted Angel to have enough room to relax and get away from it all, do a little pondering, a little brooding, and a little research. Every once in a while, someone will come up to have a little conversation." In the final season, the team moves to the evil law firm, Wolfram & Hart.
Format Much like Buffy, Angel is told in a serialized format, with each episode involving a self-contained story while contributing to a larger storyline. Unlike Buffy, however, the season-long narratives are not marked by the rise and defeat of a powerful antagonist, commonly referred to as the "Big Bad" in the parent series. Instead, the overarching story of all five seasons of the series pitted Angel as the central player in a battle between the "good" Powers That Be and the "evil" law firm Wolfram & Hart and his possible role in a prophesied apocalypse. It mixes the complex, series-long storyline along with more stand-alone, villain-of-the-week episodes. The show blends different genres, including horror, fantasy, supernatural, and a combination of comedic and dramatic content.
Season 1 is mainly told in a "monster of the week" format, with each episode creating a self-contained story that took place around the title character. Later seasons became more serialized, where the majority of episodes contribute to a larger story arc that unfolded over many episodes. The most extreme example of this is season 4, in which almost every episode contributed to the main storyline, and often picked up exactly where the previous episode ended.
The series' narrative revolves around Angel and his colleagues, collectively making up the detective agency Angel Investigations, who fight against supernatural evils and work to "help the helpless". A typical episode contains one or more villains or supernatural phenomena that is thwarted or defeated, and one or more people in need of help, a few of whom Angel and associates are not able to assist (including some main characters) since episode one. Though elements and relationships are explored and ongoing subplots are included, the show focuses centrally on Angel and his road to redemption.