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Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Crown Media United States, LLC

[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]

Hallmark staple Kellie Martin joins When Calls the Heart‘s Kavan Smith (also of my Growing the Big One) in Hello, It’s Me, a new romance on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Sunday night.

Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Crown Media United States, LLC

Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Crown Media United States, LLC

It’s bit of an amalgam of other projects we’ve seen, including The Christmas Ornament, which starred Martin herself a few seasons back. Here, Martin (again) plays a widowed baker (only this time she’s also a mom) who has a meet cute with a wealthy bachelor who’s a genuinely good guy. She’s terrified to connect with him because of her previous loss, until she gets a little otherworldly nudge, which is what I think bumps it to HMM vs. HC, in case you wondered.

It’s a very sweet, heartfelt film, and like The Christmas Ornament, it’s an effective story about balancing loss and rare opportunities to find love again. I’m so glad to see Smith come to play here. It’s been five years since he headlined a romantic film for the network, and he’s long overdue. (Garage Sale Mystery: All That Glitters doesn’t count, which makes sense if you’ve seen it).

Perhaps now that he’s more familiar because of When Calls the Heart, he’ll get to do more of these. I hope so. I adore him. He and Martin are very good together. I’m so glad she’s working so much, too, keeping busy with films for Hallmark’s networks and UP. It’s also really nice, as we head into a season of a lot of new TV movies, where not all of them stick the landing, to see two films back to back (after Saturday’s Love on the Air) be equally solid, lovely films.

Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Crown Media United States, LLC

Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Crown Media United States, LLC

Mark Jean, who directed The Christmas Ornament (and my Three Weeks, Three Kids), directs a script by Julie Sherman Wolfe (her first Hallmark project, although she’s written for TV and wrote a really cute film for Lifetime in 2007 called I Me Wed) based on the 2005 novel by Wendy Markham. In addition to Martin and Smith, look for Continuum‘s Rachael Crawford in a much softer role than we’re used to.

Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Crown Media United States, LLC

Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Crown Media United States, LLC

Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Crown Media United States, LLC

Hello, It’s Me premieres Sunday night at 9/8c on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Here’s a sneak peek.