Highway To Heaven – Season Two
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: C Episodes: C
Michael Landon’s “angel nebbing” continues in Highway
To Heaven – Season Two, for the 1986-87 TV year from A&E. Even with tough-guy co-star Victor French,
the show actually gets much sappier than expected from here on in, proving
Landon knew his audience. That does not
make it great TV, but it made it commercially successful and the show helped
NBC out in profound ways.
The six-DVD/24 episode set offers the following shows:
1)
A Song For Jason (split here in
two-parts)
2)
Bless The Boys In Blue
3)
Cindy
4)
The Devil & Jonathan Smith
5)
Birds Of A Feather
6)
Popcorn, Peanuts & Crackerjacks
7)
The Smile In The Third Row
8)
The Secret
9)
The Monster (split here in two-parts)
10)
The Good Doctor
11)
Alone
12)
Close
Encounters Of The Heavenly Kind
13)
Change Of Life
14)
Keep
Smiling
15)
The Last
Assignment
16)
To Bind The
Wounds
17)
Heaven On
Earth
18)
Summit
19)
The Torch
20)
Sail Away
21)
Children’s
Children
22)
Friends
The extreme Right continues to 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, even one so clichéd. That’s why they have been ripping it off and imitating it ever
since. IT may get silly, but it is
original enough for what it is.
The full frame image quality not as good as the previous
set, with lack of depth, softness, color fading, artifacts and scratches here
& there, and a dated look. Digital
HD transfers and some other work is 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. The only extras are a repeat of text bios on
French and Landon, and an audio commentary on The Torch by Cindy Landon
and producer Kent McCray. It is a show
on The Holocaust that is easily one of the best in the whole series. At least some of the show’s intents were
sincere.
- Nicholas Sheffo
