You know what there aren't enough of these days? Dramas about the post office. I'm speaking to folks who remember when humans actually hand-wrote and sent letters — a graying demographic at whom "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," the new Hallmark series, is squarely aimed (and oh, how square it is).
Brought to you by the people behind "Touched By An Angel," it repackages that treacly show's weekly-rescue format for our atheistic age. What's the next best thing to heavenly agents? The people who work in the dead-letter department at the US Postal Service, that's what.
(I'm hoping a mid-season supernatural twist will reveal them to be as dead as the letters, but that's just the frustrated "Lost" viewer in me.)
The show, which has its origins in a 2013 Hallmark movie but wouldn't have seemed out of place in the 1950s, stars Eric Mabius as team leader Oliver, a type-A boss who's prone to rhetorical questions like "Are we in the habit of ignoring miracles?" and aphorisms such as, "Putting a stamp on a letter and sending it out there into the world is an act of faith."
Yes, there's a generous helping of Christian values here, but in a less sanctimonious tone than "Touched" ever managed. The central driving force here is not religion but nostalgia — for an age when people took time to choose their words carefully, and those words took days, weeks or sometimes even years to reach their addressees.
Oliver and his lily-white team (is there any other sort on Hallmark?) function as postal detectives, tracking down the stories behind misplaced, mangled or badly-addressed mail. There's Shane (Kristin Booth), a mildly saucy blonde who's a slow-burn love interest for Oliver; Reta (Crystal Lowe), a hottie who's made out to be a frump because she wears glasses; and Norman (Geoff Gustafson), a Jack Black type who provides low-fi tech support and is really into stamps.
In this week's second episode, Valerie Harper returns as a postal higher-up, and Michael Hogan (Col. Tigh from "Battlestar Galactica") makes an appearance as a military officer. Following up on the grandmother-centric plot last week, this one revolves around a war vet and an Afghan girl he helped to rescue.
Grannies and former soldiers: you can't say this show doesn't know its viewership. But speaking as neither of those things, I can honestly say the unwavering, insistent sincerity of "Signed, Sealed," and its tearjerking final acts, are hard to resist, despite often being served up in greeting-card platitudes. Besides, there's an almost subversive delight in hearing someone complimented thusly: "She's a postal legend!" Don't mind me, I'll be over here wiping my eyes and brushing up on my calligraphy.
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