Highway To Heaven – Season One

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Episodes: C+

 

 

In what turned out to be a sad precedent for bad dramatic TV, Michael Landon had an idea all the networks rejected.  No one thought the story of an angel nebbing in other people’s business and “helping” them.  NBC was just climbing out of ratings hell when they decided to allow Landon to do his show based on his star power.  No one thought it could be a hit, that it was too old fashioned.  Instead, Highway To Heaven (1985) turned into a surprise hit that the network desperately needed and put Landon back on the map again.

 

Co-staring Victor French as the guy who actually picks him up hitchhiking, no one knew they would be traveling the country for several seasons.  Unlike its many imitators, the series is not pretentious and extremist propaganda like clone Touched By An Angel (which we describe around here with another word beginning with “A” that you can spell with two additional letters).  Not to say it is free of dogmatic moments, but it does not have an extremist agenda, just a bunch of melodrama that makes it competitive for guest spots with the likes of The Love Boat.

 

The seven-DVD/25 episode Season One set offers the following shows:

 

1)     Pilot (split here in two-parts)

2)     To Touch The Moon

3)     The Return Of The Masked Rider

4)     Song Of The Wild West

5)     One Fresh Batch Of Lemonade (two-parts)

6)     A Divine Madness

7)     Catch A Falling Star

8)     Help Wanted: Angel

9)     Dust Child

10)  Hotel Of Dreams

11)  Another Song For Christmas

12)  Plane Death

13)  One Winged Angels

14)  Going Home, Going Home

15)  As Difficult As ABC

16)  A Child Of God

17)  A Match Made In Heaven

18)  The Banker & The Bum

19)  The Brightest Star

20)  An Investment In Caring

21)  The Right Thing

22)  Thoroughbreads

 

 

To begin to tell the plot of each show reveals one of the most basic formulas anyone could come up with, which is why all the networks were so skeptical.  This is some of the last of “family” TV before it became a wasteland of things even more sickening than any of the melodrama on this show.  The extreme Right has been careful not to celebrate a show that plays as loose with faith as this does, as well as the fact that Landon was Jewish.  With that said, this gets tired very quickly, but credit should be given to Landon for not being underhanded in the creation of the show.

 

The full frame image quality is on the rich side, despite some lack of depth and some color issues.  There are artifacts and scratches here and there, but this is passable until digital HD transfers are needed.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 is stereo boosted from the show’s original monophonic sound.  That helps a great deal, since the sound sounds second generation and is a bit small sounding to begin with.  Maybe the audio was not great mono for its time, but leaving it that way would have been bad.  Good thing A&E/New Video odes things better.  The only extras are text bios on French and Landon, a brief outtakes reel and the highlight of the set: Michael Landon: Memories With Laughter & Love.  This is a really good 100+ minutes retrospective of his career by his own family loaded with clips, remarkable color clips of Bonanza that makes us want to see a pristine set of that series, Johnny Carson interview footage and interviews with some major actors (Dick Van Dyke, Eli Wallach) to boot.  Fans who have already ran out and bought Little House On The Prairie will be pleased with set.  Even if you are not a fan of the show, Highway To Heaven was a hit for reasons that made sense.  Those who want to remember have this set to rely on.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo