If you are a fan of feel-good Christmas movies — filled with cute meets, earnest characters, and happy endings — Hellmark Channel Season Four is not for you.
Our creative team has developed ten quintessential Hellmark plotlines, with characters and circumstances that are less than predictable, less than palatable, less than wholesome.
There is no ugly sweater whimsy here. No chit chat about hot chocolate consumption. No joy from the unexpected warblings of neighborhood carolers. No interrupted mistletoe kisses. No flirtatious flour fights. No euphoria from saving the local theatre. No making curmudgeons less curmudgeonly.
Stories based on disgusting bodily functions? Sure. Industrial sabotage? Yep. Speech impediments? Naturally.
Enjoy the diversion. And as always, please select your favorites by voting in the poll at the end of the post.
THRONE FOR A LOOP
Prince Leopold of Latkovia is absolutely smitten with the new American nanny. She is great with the children, down-to-earth, and can definitely hold her own in an impromptu snowball fight. But his ardent feelings are put to the test when he accidentally discovers that she can also hold her own when urinating: the nanny is a tranny!
VOID WHERE PROHIBITED
Old Man Winthrop has a big personality and a bigger prostate; his all-too frequent bathroom breaks are jeopardizing his long-time role as the beloved mall Santa. Will he don adult diapers to comply with the demands of unsympathetic mall management, or secretly run a catheter line that empties into the dancing fountains? Urine for a surprise.
TO GNOME IS TO LOVE HIM
When interior designer Jennie hires a handyman from Santa’s Little Helpers, she is too flustered by pressing deadlines to notice that it was a job placement service for Little People. Undersized but not overmatched, the handsome wee worker excels at dusting baseboards, trimming tree bottoms, and maybe, just maybe, getting Jennie to look up to him.
STRINGING HIM ALONG
To help save her grandfather’s failing Christmas tree lot, Samantha secures a service job at the town’s new artificial tree store, surreptitiously pulling master fuses from light strings and slicing wires before home deliveries. But a crisis of conscience bubbles up when she falls hard for the rugged store owner, who puts her in charge of troubleshooting the vexing quality problem. Will she admit to breaking his balsams?
WINNIE LOOKS AT ME THAT WAY
Life imitates art when the queen of romantic Christmas movies attends a promotional conference with dozens of hunky costars but instead finds herself attracted to an adoring small-town fan whose lure includes after-hours Skee-Ball.
SHE’S CHECKING HIS LISP
Paula is one of Branchville’s top speech pathologists. She is head over heels for new beau Adam, whose young son Micah struggles with frontal and lateral lisps but is determined to compete in the school spelling bee next month. Though her coaching during the hectic holidays was helpful, improvement was marginal and the fates were cruel. Micah’s first contest word was sesame; the judges are still drying their scorecards.
SANTA HAS A BRAND NEW BAG
After successfully running a catheter line to the mall fountain to circumvent his overactive bladder, Old Man Winthrop has to dodge another health bullet if he wants to remain mall Santa: a stubborn intestinal blockage has him concealing a colostomy bag. An innocent misstep draws scrutiny when he reaches into his appliance pouch instead of his gift sack and presents little Johnny with most of yesterday’s fish taco.
JINGLE BALLS 2: SON OF A NUTCRACKER!
Past is prologue in this heartbreaking Season One sequel. Ballet star Jonathan – now twenty years removed from experimental surgery to replace his shattered testicles with a reverberating alloy – takes his protégé son Ludwig to visit Latkovia and old family friend Prince Leopold. All is well until Ludwig ambles into the castle courtyard and unwisely picks a snowball fight with Leopold’s whippet-armed nanny.
THE HAND THAT ROOKS THE DREIDEL
Irish-Catholic Emily has enjoyed the cross-cultural experiences that come with dating former college classmate Isaac, especially during the holidays. But she has grown increasingly suspicious that whenever the pot balloons during a family game of dreidel, bubbe Esther somehow always spins a gimel. Accuse a beloved matriarch of playing with a loaded dreidel? The shiksa is going to hit the fan.
IN A TOUGH SPOT
There is a lot to like about Arthur, the love interest that town spinster Margaret recently connected with on Borrowed Time – the dating site for octogenarians. He opens his own pickle jars, counts his own meds, and really gives phone scammers the what for. If only the arrangement of liver spots on his forehead did not resemble Myrtle Ferguson, the carhop skank who ran off with Margaret’s high school sweetheart during Christmas break.
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