THIS SHOW ISN'T JUST WINGING IT.

Byline: PHIL ROSENTHAL 

It is Saturday night, the loneliest night of the week for the dateless, the aged, families and others who have largely given up on TV.

Many find solace in the warm, gentle embrace of CBS' "Touched by an Angel."

"It's a show about God," executive producer Martha Williamson said, acknowledging her program's greatest - and riskiest - asset. "That's a hell of a responsibility. It's rather impertinent to think that we're going to decide each week what God thinks, but we do our best."

Given what one CBS programmer called "a suicide mission" last season, "Touched by an Angel" was a marginal renewal call. Yet it has won its 9 p.m. Saturday time slot in 11 of 17 weeks, including the last five weeks in a row.

"People," Williamson said, "were dying to have somebody come into their homes who said: 'You have some control over your life. You have some power over your life. There is hope.' "

Created by "L.A. Law" alumnus John Masius, the original pilot for "Touched" was a bust. Had it not been produced by the network's own production company, it certainly would have been scrapped. Instead, Williamson, whose credits include "Facts of Life," was brought in to salvage the series six weeks before its 1994 debut.

She found that salvation in the Bible.

"When you're starting over like that, you go to your source," Williamson said. "I looked at the Scriptures and said: 'OK, God exists. God loves you. God wants to be part of your life, but it's up to you to do something about it, pal.'

"If you're going to do a show about angels, you better skew it for the people who believe in them. ... You can't get around God."

Williamson's angels, Tess (Della Reese) and Monica (Roma Downey), are caring but not always all-knowing celestial caseworkers. They are not wing-and-harp angels. They walk among us.

Miracles are spare and sparse here. Perhaps the engine of an abandoned car will start or a hot-air balloon will materialize. But, in the end, the woman with AIDS still has AIDS, the single mom is still a stripper, the old nightclub owner dies.

It is sweet, heartwarming Capra-esque television just the same. The angel of death who takes the old man, for example, is not some dark and foreboding figure. He is young and earnest, and, like the other angels, has a job to do. If the old man is to die, it will not be before Tess thanks him for a life well-lived and Monica ensures his legacy.

"It does touch something that everybody wants, that is to know that you're loved and you have the opportunity to change your life," Williamson said. "There are a lot of lonely people out there, and the more dangerous the world seems to be to people, the more they want to be inside and be safe."

If each week's homily about homelessness, suicide and the like resonates now - when "The Book of Virtues" is a best seller or Joan Osborne's song asking "What if God was one of us?" is on the charts - it is, in retrospect, not surprising.

"There will be a time when faith and family values are no longer the trend," Williamson said. "But there will never be a time when faith and values don't matter."

As for the naysayers who were sure this show would fail, Williamson is charitable.

"God bless them," she said. "They came back and admitted they were wrong. They not only said that, yes, it has survived, but it's pretty good."

"Touched by an Angel," it seems, has been touched by angels of its own.