[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
Bethany Joy Lenz makes her Hallmark Movies & Mysteries debut Sunday night with The Christmas Secret, a quiet, lovely film about Christine, a single mom doing the very best she can to get through each day, and the Christmas season, as challenges pop up all round her. Her luck changes when she stops to save the life of a woman stricken with a heart attack. That one decision sets in motion a chain of events that help turn her luck for the better–and it all hinges on a locked locket handed down from the father she never knew. Therein lies the mystery.
Lenz is joined by John Reardon, who you may recognize as Kiera’s husband on Continuum and gunslinger Nate on When Calls the Heart, as well as familiar Canadian faces Susan Hogan (from one of my favorites, Three Weeks, Three Kids) and BSG and Teen Wolf‘s Michael Hogan (who, shoot me, I did not realize were married IRL and play a married couple here), Bitten‘s Greyston Holt, Dead Like Me’s Christine Willis, Nicola Cavendish, Karin Konoval, and Da Vinci’s Inquest‘s Venus Terzo. William Ainscough and Jaeda Lily Miller plays Christine’s kids, Zach and Hayley (and yes, I did laugh the first time Lenz calls her daughter Hayley).
I adore this cast, so I watched it from the perspective of being happy to see all of them on my TV–and it’s a treat to see Michael Hogan play a nice guy. Lenz is very good as Christine, and she and Reardon have a nice chemistry as mistaken identity and misunderstandings come into play and then the blinders come off and each realizes who the other is. There are several gem moments. This one is staying on the DVR.
The Christmas Secret airs Sunday night at 9/8c on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Here’s a sneak peek.
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