Michael Landon was Jonathan Smith, an angel sent to Earth, and Victor French was Mark Gordon, a retired cop. And Smith's mission was to accompany Gordon.
We're talking about "Higway to heaven."
Jonathan was an unforgettable angel. He had the gift of being able to talk to God, he was endowed with some powers and, for example, he could stay on Earth without hunger or sleep. He healed people's suffering and taught them lessons and changed their lives. And so, each chapter was an explosion of emotions.
Both actors directed part of the fiction and Landon also wrote some of the scripts. They were super talented and multi-functional guys.
Victor French was forever grateful to Landon for allowing him to step out of the "bad guy" characters. (Although Michael had already given him a chance to be good with a cute character in "The Ingalls Family" or "Little House on the Prairie," depending on where you read us from.)
The series had an unexpected ending after five seasons with a total of 111 episodes. And that ending was as unexpected as that of these two great friends (we're talking about real life) who died within a short time of each other and at the same age.
French died very shortly after being diagnosed with lung cancer. That diagnosis was given to him while he was filming the series and that made him leave it in an episode that left viewers in pure tears. And shortly thereafter Michael Landon left us because of pancreatic cancer which sadly killed him within a few months.
If you haven't seen "Higway to heaven", you should put it on a pending list, it is one of those classic series that seems that the passage of time does not make a dent in them.
