Hallmark Has Inaugural ‘Fall Harvest’ of Autumnal Movies
Consider this a PSA for anyone impatiently awaiting the start of Hallmark Channel’s “Countdown to Christmas" and the 17 new original movies it will bring: the network’s doing its first-ever “Fall Harvest” throughout the month of October.
Related: Watch the Trailer for Hallmark’s ‘Northpole: Open for Christmas’
First up was Oct. 3′s Autumn Dreams, which repeats this Saturday at 5 p.m. It stars Something Borrowed’s Colin Egglesfield and Teen Wolf’s Jill Wagner as former high school sweethearts in the Midwest whose annulment never actually went through. Fifteen years later, they’re both engaged to other people and have to reunite in his adopted home, New York City, to make it official before his fiancee finds out. It’s a charmer and tries to hide the fact that there’s no way it was actually filmed in New York (most evident when Egglesfield’s character takes the down-home doctorate student, who’s now running her daddy’s farm, to “Brooklyn” for a slice of pizza).
This Saturday, Oct. 10, also brings the 9 p.m. premiere of Harvest Moon. It ups the Fall Factor by being centered around a pumpkin farm.
A pumpkin farm.
Falling Skies’ Jessy Schram (also Once Upon a Time’s Cinderella and a perfect hybrid of Anna Camp and Brittany Snow) stars as a rich girl/amateur fashion and beauty blogger whose dad (Willie Aames!) goes bankrupt. All she has to her name is the aforementioned pumpkin farm, which she decides she’ll spruce up and sell. The catch: There’s a family who lives and works on the farm — led by widowed single dad Brett, played by Jesse Hutch, who Hallmark fans will recognize from My Boyfriends’ Dogs and Let It Snow — and they’re not going to make it easy on her. Like Harvest Moon, there’s a town dance and you know immediately how it’ll end once there’s a mention of “grandma’s pumpkin creme” (which is a great moisturizer). In other words, it’s exactly what you want it to be.
We haven’t yet screened Oct. 17′s 9 p.m. premiere, October Kiss, but there’s more pumpkins and great outdoor lighting, so we’re in. It stars Ashley Williams as Poppy, a free-spirited nanny hired by Ryan (Parenthood’s Sam Jaegar), a widowed workaholic, to help care for his two young children around Halloween.
The final film in the Fall Harvest, airing Oct. 24, is billed as a two-hour sneak peek of 2016′s second season of the Hallmark series Good Witch, which stars Catherine Bell, Bailee Madison, and James Denton. Obviously the network wants to woo new viewers to the show and not miss the chance to revolve a story around Middleton’s annual Halloween Fall Festival. But one of these things is not like the others. We prefer finite two-hour escapes.
Though those decorations and candles do look great…
