True Entertainment?

Such is the dearth of entertainment on daytime television, I have tonight found myself watching an episode of Highway To Heaven on the True Entertainment channel. Now having a show called Highway To Heaven, the idea of which is that an angel, played by Little Joe from Bonanza, has come back to earth under the pseudonym Jonathan Smith (John Smith, geddit?) to do good things, is far fetched enough, but True Entertainment?

He does all these good things with a loveable old drifter called Mark, who has a bushy beard and always wears a baseball cap. They drive from town to town, get jobs, presumably without any references or CRB checks, doing work for The Boss, often looking after very young children. We never see or hear The Boss but the general assumption is that he is the God character with whom we are familiar from childhood. You know the one: “Eat your sprouts or else I’ll tell God and you won’t get that bicycle you want for Christmas.”

Jonathan always shares a room with Mark, but in a platonic, non sexual kind of way. Actually, the sex word is not mentioned at all but I would imagine that they are straight or even asexual. Well, the show is rated PG so you would not expect to see them kissing each other on the cheek.

The good thing about Jonathan is that as an angel, he can do magic tricks, rather like Dynamo or Derren Brown. In tonight’s episode, he managed to make a ruby ring appear on a woman’s finger after she said it had been stolen. Not only that, he didn’t tell her he had done it, which made the trick somewhat less impressive. In fact, the director, who also happened to me Little Joe, left that bit in the air!

It would not be exactly inaccurate to say that every single episode is the same as the last one. There is a child involved, a bad tempered rich adult and a woman who bursts in to tears at some point. Upon this template, a threadbare story is usually added. The storyline doesn’t really matter, certainly not to me, as I lost the thread long before the first commercial break.

Being an angel, it appears that Jonathan doesn’t have all the powers of a God character. He can do complex magic tricks but he can’t make ill people better. Perhaps the God in Highway to Heaven is a Jehovahs witness who refuses blood transfusions or he simply can’t be bothered, what with all the other work he has to do around the world.

Despite the fact that the entire premise of the show is complete nonsense, I find myself watching 30 year old episodes, hoping that good will triumph and the bad guy will get his comeuppance. Usually, it does and he does. Essentially, it’s bit like professional wrestling: you suspend your sense of disbelief and just for a while pretend its all real. I’m not sure I’d like to share a pint with Jonathan – he’s a bit too goody-two shoes for me – but Mark would probably be good company for a Bud or two.

It’s obviously not true entertainment but then neither was ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ and that was one of the greatest movies ever.

I’m waiting eagerly for Jonathan and Mark’s next assignment from The Boss!