’Tis the Season for Setups Opens the Biggest Countdown Hallmark Has Ever Run
Thirty-four original movies. Ten more than last year. Hallmark’s own words for the 17th Countdown to Christmas are “the most ever to premiere during Hallmark Channel’s yearly event,” and the film they picked to carry opening night is a comedy about two grown adults conspiring to get their parents together.
’Tis the Season for Setups premieres Friday, October 16 at 8/7c. Hallmark flips to holiday programming that morning at 6:00 am and does not flip back, so this is the movie that sets the temperature for the next two months.
The setups are not the ones you think
This is the part worth getting right, because the title is doing a little misdirection. Lexi is a hyper-organized single mom and party planner. She has been hired to run the annual holiday party at a ski resort, and she brings her free-spirited mother June and her teen daughter Piper along for the season. Ridge is the ski instructor, and his father Dan owns the lodge.
Lexi and Ridge notice a spark between June and Dan. Neither of them is thrilled about it. They team up anyway, grudgingly, and start engineering reasons for their parents to be in the same room. Three generations of one family under a resort roof, two single parents being pushed at each other by their own children, and the inevitable outcome hiding in plain sight the entire time.
Hallmark’s short blurb calls Lexi a caterer and Ridge a snowboarder, while its longer synopsis and every outlet covering the slate say party planner and ski instructor. The longer version is almost certainly the film.
Amanda Schull was a professional ballerina first
Before Suits, before 12 Monkeys, Amanda Schull danced in the corps de ballet at the San Francisco Ballet. She trained at Hawaii State Ballet, took a ballet scholarship to Indiana University, and went professional. Her film debut was Jody Sawyer in Center Stage in 2000, which is a dance movie because she was a dancer, and she did not retire from the company until 2006.
Most Hallmark viewers know her as Katrina Bennett, who recurred on Suits for six seasons before being promoted to series regular for the last two, or as Dr. Cassandra Railly across all four seasons of 12 Monkeys. This is her seventh Hallmark movie, after titles including Love, Once and Always, Project Christmas Wish and One Summer.
Victor Webster has been quietly everywhere
Webster played Brennan Mulwray across 66 episodes of Mutant X, Detective Carlos Fonnegra through all four seasons of Continuum, and he has recurred on Hallmark’s Hannah Swensen Mysteries as Chad Norton. In between he headlined two Scorpion King sequels and turned up on Charmed, Castle and Workin’ Moms.
His Hallmark shelf runs deep: Five Star Christmas, Homegrown Christmas, Hearts of Winter, Summer Villa, A Harvest Wedding, The Wedding Veil Legacy, the MatchMaker Mysteries films. He also holds black belts in taekwondo and Brazilian jiu jitsu and reportedly never lost a taekwondo match, which is an unusual line to find in a Christmas movie press kit.
And then there is Barbara Niven
If you have watched Hallmark for any length of time, you have watched Barbara Niven. She was Peggy Beldon on Cedar Cove, the network’s first original primetime series. She was Megan O’Brien across all six seasons of Chesapeake Shores. She has appeared in four Christmas in Evergreen films, five Murder, She Baked movies, six Crossword Mysteries, and enough standalones to push her past thirty Hallmark titles by any reasonable count.
Casting her as the mother being set up is the joke landing on the right person. She has spent a decade playing the woman who knows exactly what everyone else is up to.
Rounding out the cast, Verity Marks plays Piper, Lexi’s teen daughter, and John B. Lowe plays Dan, the lodge owner on the receiving end of the matchmaking.
A small thing that connects opening weekend
Niven spent six seasons playing Brendan Penny’s mother on Chesapeake Shores. Penny leads Mr. & Mrs. Christmas two nights later, on Sunday October 18. They are not in a movie together this year, but Hallmark has effectively booked the O’Brien family across the first weekend of the season, which is either a scheduling coincidence or somebody in programming having a bit of fun.
When to watch
’Tis the Season for Setups premieres Friday, October 16 at 8/7c on Hallmark Channel and streams the next day on Hallmark+. Encores run Saturday October 17 at 6/5c, Thursday October 22 at 10/9c, and Wednesday October 28 at 8/7c.
From there it is a new original every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8/7c for ten weeks, ending December 20. Our 17th Countdown to Christmas guide has all 34 titles with dates, times and casts.
There is something fitting about a network built on people finding each other opening its biggest season with a movie where the leads spend the whole film trying to make it happen for somebody else. Hallmark knows what it is. Thirty-four movies is a lot of confidence, and starting with a joke at its own expense is a good sign.
Sources: Hallmark Channel, TV Insider, TVLine.
