It’s no secret to people that know me that I have a fierce love of Hallmark Channel original movies. This holds especially true for Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ series Signed, Sealed, Delivered, written & produced by Martha Williamson (who also wrote & produced the CBS series Touched by an Angel).
Starting with a 2-hour pilot film and a 10-episode TV series before switching formats to a 2-hour film series, Signed, Sealed, Delivered is about 4 USPS employees who make up the team that work in the Dead Letter Office (DLO) department of the Denver, CO main branch. The team consists of section leader Oliver O’Toole (Eric Mabius), technophile Shane McInerney (Kristin Booth), postal history buff Norman Dorman (Geoff Gustafson), and Eidetiker Rita Haywith (Crystal Lowe), collectively known as the POstables (which is also the name of the fandom).
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Higher Ground is the 8th film following the pilot & television series, and since each film frequently calls back to prior films & series episodes I highly recommend that one go back & watch them all in order, which is as follows:
Signed, Sealed, Delivered (2013) – Pilot episode
Signed, Sealed, Delivered (2014) – Television series
Signed, Sealed, Delivered for Christmas (2014) – 1st film on the then-newly rebranded Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: From Paris with Love (2015)
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Truth Be Told (2015)
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: The Impossible Dream (2015)
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: From the Heart (2016)
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: One in a Million (2016)
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Lost Without You (2016)
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Higher Ground (2017)
In Higher Ground the POstables find themselves in posession of a love letter written by a blues singer named Gabe, who was displaced from New Orleans during hurricane Katrina and relocated to Denver, to a woman named Hattie, the owner of a blues club in New Orleans.
Being from south Louisiana and actually having gone through Hurricane Katrina (although being an hour northwest of New Orleans I wasn’t involved in the levee breach & subsequent flooding there), I felt a personal attachment to Gabe’s story, both by actually being in New Orleans when evacuations started before Katrina hit and having gone through the Louisiana flooding in August of 2016.
Martha handles Gabe & Hattie’s story with such grace – showing what it truly was like for people who went through Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans while still maintaining the humor and spirit that POstables around the world have come to expect from our favorite Hallmark series.
Of course, SSD is about way more than just the dead letter mysteries – while fun, the real beauty of the series is about the POstables themselves and the relationships between them. As of the beginning of Higher Ground Norman & Rita have been dating for a year (although they had carried torches for each other for a lot longer than that) and Shane & Oliver are on the verge of romance themselves. (Again, watch from the beginning to enjoy the progression of their relationships and the character growth!)
Without giving anything away (because you really do need to need to watch it for yourself), I will say that I was crying within the first 30 seconds and at various points throughout Higher Ground. The last 15 minutes were utter perfection and has been the culmination of years’ worth of work on part of Martha and the cast, and years’ worth of patience from POstables all over!
Luckily we get 3 more SSD films this year. I know this POstable is eagerly awaiting the next chapter!
Final rating for Higher Ground: 5 Sporks (that hopefully don’t get lost in the mail)
Follow Martha & the cast on Twitter @MarthaMoonwater, @Eric_Mabius, @kristintbooth, @geoffgustafson, & @RealCrystalLowe, Tweet along using the hashtag #POstables, and for all things Signed, Sealed, Delivered check out the Alameda & Downing blog, which is run by Chandel Charles, the POstable fandom’s (un)official section leader!
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