Highway to Heaven
Back to Oakland
TV Flash files “Back to Oakland” as hour 88 of 108 in the TV Flash guide — Highway to Heaven (1984–1989) on NBC, season 4, episode 16, aired 1988-02-03, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S04E16: listed hour 88 of 108 in the Highway to Heaven guide, hour 16 of 24 in season 4. It aired 1988-02-03 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Time in a Bottle” (S04E15). Next is “We Have Forever (1)” (S04E17).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
As part of the latest assignment, Mark returns to Oakland to become a police officer again and is reunited with his old partner, but things are not the way he left it when he finds his old beat has become a storm of racial hatred.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Back to Oakland sit in the Highway to Heaven guide?
S04E16 is listed hour 88 of 108 — hour 16 of 24 in season 4, season 4 episode 16.
When did Highway to Heaven S04E16 air?
Back to Oakland aired 1988-02-03 and is listed at 60 minutes.
Is it just Little House on a highway?
Spiritual-successor energy, same preacher. Landon wrote, directed, and kept the sincerity. The partnership with Victor French is the new instrument — kindness as a job, not Walnut Grove.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Michael Landon as a probationary angel and Victor French as the bitter ex-cop riding shotgun: weekly redemption on American highways when grit was the fashion. Landon wrote, directed, and preached with Little House sincerity intact. If you can stomach the lump-in-throat moral, the partnership is the real miracle — two men treating kindness as a job.
The instrument is a sermon the decade did not dress for. NBC's *Highway to Heaven* (1984–1989) puts Michael Landon as probationary angel Jonathan Smith and Victor French as retired cop Mark Gordon on American highways when grit was the fashion. Landon writing, directing, and preaching with Little House sincerity intact. Spiritual-successor energy to those prairie values, now in a car. The lump-in-the-throat moral is the house style. The blotter will file the multi-hyphenate control. The text is two men treating…
Filed against
- Michael Landon as Jonathan Smith
Michael Landon’s Little Joe Cartwright is the matinee face of Bonanza — the youngest son as Sunday-night color, the through-line who remained when the Ponderosa roster broke. NBC’s glossy family western treated the ranch like a parish;…
- Victor French as Mark Gordon
Victor French’s Mark Gordon rode shotgun on Highway to Heaven — Michael Landon as a probationary angel, a bitter ex-cop on American highways when grit was the fashion. Landon wrote, directed, and preached with Little House sincerity…