To do this, Russell and his family traveled around the country in a beat up Airstream trailer, helping people in need, looking for work, and learning from their experiences.

Russell's family included his wife Claire (Wendy Phillips), who was licensed to homeschool their kids while they were on the road; his mother Hattie (Celeste Holm), who updated a hand-embroidered map to show all places they had traveled; teenage son Josh (Austin O'Brien); daughter Dinah (Sarah Schaub); and young nephew Nathaniel (Eddie Karr), who had been abandoned by Russell's troubled brother Joe (Richard Thomas).

Occasionally they were assisted by Tess or other angels while they tried to help people overcome their personal problems or rekindle their lapsed faith.

In the third season, the family decided to settle down and moved into a run-down small house in a poor neighborhood in Denver, Colorado.

Josh's girlfriend was Bobbie, an unwed mother with an infant son, and Dinah had a friend named Margot, who enjoyed the 1940s era and its fashions in particular.

In the series' final episode, Hattie married an old friend of the family and Russell quit the Ridley Center to take a job as a police officer.

The pilot episode took place primarily in the fictional town of Chickory Creek, Kentucky but the actual location was Springville, Utah.

The newly hired crew of Promised Land spent six days reshooting portions of the pilot episode in July 1996.