WHEN CALLS THE HEART Creators Announce New Show with Angel Studios
By Movieguide® Contributor
Brian Bird and Michael Landon Jr., the creators of WHEN CALLS THE HEART, are collaborating with Angel Studios to create HOME TO HARMONY, a new show starring Trent Garrett and comedian Chonda Pierce.
“If you want to laugh and cry and have your heart lifted like it is on WHEN CALLS THE HEART…HOME TO HARMONY is coming,” Garrett wrote on a sneak peek at the show.
While little is known about the plot of the upcoming show, the fact that it promises a similar experience to WHEN CALLS THE HEART is exciting news for fans of the show.
As the duo begins production on HOME TO HARMONY, their focus still remains on WHEN CALLS THE HEART, which recently aired the finale for Season 11. This season proved to be the most popular yet as the show not only grabbed the top spot on Hallmark but also landed as the No. 1 entertainment cable program for 12 weeks straight.
The show’s popularity ended up lifting Hallmark to the most-watched entertainment TV network among key demographics on weekends as well, further highlighting the wide reach of the show. Bird believes that WHEN CALLS THE HEART has found such a strong audience because it focuses on Christian values that are hard to come by in today’s media.
“Get this, a whole family can sit down and watch this show together,” Bird told Movieguide®. “We challenge anybody to show us where you can actually do that on television. So, for us, it’s exciting.”
“My best memories, and probably some of yours, are with my family watching television, and nowadays everybody [is off] to their own rooms, to their own iPads, their own phones, their own tablets, their own TVs, watching their little niche channels. There’s something wrong with that picture, and I think it’s about time we fix that.”
HOME FOR HARMONY is likely part of that initiative to fix how we consume media and bring families back to the TV together.
Movieguide® previously reported:
WHEN CALLS THE HEART producer Brian Bird sat down with Movieguide® to talk about why the show continues to succeed after 11 seasons.
“This is the only television show across the country that is based on a Christian novel,” Bird began. “We think it’s radical. We think this is revolutionary. There’s not another show like it on television.”
The series, inspired by Janette Oke’s book of the same name, follows “Elizabeth Thatcher, a young schoolteacher from a wealthy Eastern family, [who] migrates from the big city to teach school in a small coal mining town in the west.” Along the way, she finds love, friendship and community, and the show’s focus on Christian values makes it perfect for the whole family.