TV has a few things that seem permanent and unyielding.
There’s “NCIS” and “Law & Order,” Judge Judy and Charles Barkley and the Hallmark Channel. Except, now even Hallmark is changing.
The basics will stay the same. This season, the cable channels (Hallmark and Hallmark Mysteries) will combine for about 100 new movies, 40 of them with Christmas themes. Attractive young men and women will still bicker briefly, before deciding they kind of like each other.
But beyond that are the changes, including:
— Streaming. Hallmark Movies Now expands to become Hallmark+, with lots of old shows and some new ones. (I’ve put a previous story at the ed of this one. It starts Tuesday (Sept. 10) with a series (“The Chicken Sisters”), a movie trilogy (“Love on the Danube, shown here”) and a reality show (“Celebrations with Lacey Chabert”); there will be more soon.
— Diversity. After years of sameness, Hallmark now has characters and actors who are Black, Asian, Hispanic and gay. The “Hallmark hunks” no longer seem identical. “I’m a ‘Hallmark holiday hunk,’” actor Jonathan Bennett told the Television Critics Association, “and I’m pretty friggin’ gay.”
— Men as central characters. In the past, each Hallmark film revolved around a woman. But “Three Wise Men and a Baby” was the most-watched film of 2022; there will be more, said Lisa Hamilton Daly, Hallmark’s programming chief. “Our viewers really like seeing men talk about their emotions, be fathers, be in love, have emotional experiences, have male bonding.
— Humor, but not the jokey kind. “All the comedy comes from character,” said Gina Matthews, who wrote the upcoming “Holidazed” mini-series.
“It wasn’t ‘Let’s push that comedy.’ It just came organically.”
— Foreign settings. “Our audience loves to see our stories happen internationally …. Lacey Chabert has a movie set in Iceland,” Daly said.
Other movies have ranged from Scottish castles to three films films (Sept. 10, 12 and 19 on Hallmark+) set on a cruise of the Danube River.
Then there’s “Groomsmen” (another upcoming streaming trilogy), filmed in several European countries. “Most of it was filmed in Bulgaria ,” actor Tyler Hines said. “But we filmed a really big, beautiful portion in Santorini (a Greek island), which is a memory none of use will ever forget.”
Much of this is new to Hallmark, including mini-series, interlocking movies,
reality shows and more. “You’re seeing us expand the types of stories,” said Mike Perry, the Hallmark CEO. “And we think we can go even further.”
One other change, he said, involves “intergenerational stories.” The upcoming “Holidazed” mini-series seems to show all the changes.
Here is an eight-part part streaming mini-series, revolving around six families in a cul-de-sac at Christmastime. “It’s the best grandma part I ever had,” said Lucille Soong, 89, who was also the grandmother in “Fresh Off the Boat.”
Ser’Darius Blain said he rushed to the filming, before reading the script. He knew Dennis Haysbert, 70, would be there, presumably to play his dad.
“So we get there and I see all their faces on Zoom. And Loretta Devine goes, ‘Where’s my handsome boyfriend.’”
That’s when he learned he was playing the young hunk dating Haysbert’s ex-wife. “I was like, ‘He’s not going to be my dad? I’m the other man? Cool; got a 72-year-old girlfriend.’”
Actually, Devine is 75 and Blain is 37. And no, you didn’t see that in the old Hallmark movies.
And in case you missed it, here’s the previous story about Hallmark+.
No one would accuse Hallmark of being trendy or jumpy.
The company has been around for 114 years, still family-owned. For years, its cable channels seemed to keep re-making the same movie.
But now it’s joining TV’s biggest trend – streaming services with a “+” in their names. And it’s doing it in a surprisingly ambitious way with everything from a movies to reality shows.
“Hallmark+ will be more than just a streaming platform,” Mike Perry, the Hallmark CEO, said. “It will be the very best of Hallmark all in one place.”
The general idea was sketched at Television Critics Association sessions:
Hallmark shows will continue to appear on Peacock and Prime Video; “we definitely saw a younger and slightly more diverse audience on streaming,” said Lisa Hamilton Daly, executive vice-president for programming. But on Sept. , the small Hallmark Movies Now service will be folded into the new and larger Hallmark+.
That name may suggest an unneeded addition to a world that already has Disney+, Paramount+, Apple TV+, AMC+, MGM+ and ESPN+. But this one will be go beyond the shows themselves.
The key, Perry said, is the link between the cable channels and the Hallmark stores. “Our viewers are our shoppers and our shoppers are our viewers.”
So for $80 a year, subscribers will get a monthly greeting card, an occasional gift and discounts involving stores and cruises and such. They’ll get the shows that movies and series that run on the cable channels, plus some made-for-streaming ones, including:
— “The Chicken Sisters,” a series based on a novel about sisters with competing chicken restaurants in a small Southern town. Schuyler Fisk and Genevieve Angelson star, with Lea Thompson and Wendie Malick in support.
— “The Groomsmen,” a movie trilogy. “You’ll see three best friends fall in love, fall out of love, find new love,” said Jonathan Bennett, who came up with the idea and stars with Tyler Hynes and B.J. Britt.
— “Holidazed,” an eight-parter focusing on Christmastime for six families on a cul-de-sac. The story entwines 37 characters, older (Dennis Haysbert, Virginia Madsen, John C. McGinley, Loretta Devine) and young. “It’s a complicated web,” said writer-producer Gina Matthews, and has interlocking stories. The daughter in one family, for instance, is dating the son in another, “and these two families are at war over Christmas lights.”
— And reality shows. “We’re really thinking about that younger audience that does consume a lot of reality programming,” Daly said. The idea is to “infuse the Hallmark DNA into reality in a fun and different way.”
The quickest way tor a show to feel like Hallmark is to have one of the channel’s actors be the host. “We decided to build shows around talent,” said David Stephanou, who’s in charge of reality shows.
That idea tickled Ashley Williams, a busy actress-writer-director. She said she “started pitching him the strangest unscripted ideas ever, including me dressing up with prosthetics as my Aunt Diana and attending a Hallmark cruise. He was very polite about it, but he passed on all my ideas.”
Then he turned around and hired her to host “Small Town Set Up,” a show that tries to make romantic matches. Other stars include:
— Wes Brown once starred in a movie about a lights competition. Now he hosts “Ready, Set, Glow,” which celebrates spectacular holiday displays.
— Bennett hosts “Finding Mr. Christmas,” which has 10 actors (all relative newcomers) vying to become the male lead in a holiday movie.
— Luke McFarlane says he’s “always been a woodworker.” In “Home Is Where the Heart Is,” he’ll listen to someone’s story and then help craft something special “It’s not cookie-cutter; it’s not something you can buy.”
— And Lacey Chabert hosts “Celebrations,” creating parties to honor everyday heroes. “We call her a walking empath,” said producer Gena McCarthy. “She is the warm, beating heart at the core of this lifestyle.”
Or, as actress (and “Finding Mr. Christmas” judge) Melissa Peterman put it: “Every time Lacey Chabert sneezes, a kitten is born.”
Which, of course, clearly fits the Hallmark DNA.
Tags: Groomsmen movies, Hallmark reality shows, Hallmark+, Holidazed, Jonathan Benn