Previewing Never Been Chris’d 

[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]

Female friendships are a precious, complex animal that can sometimes get knocked off course when a third party is introduced, whether that’s a new friend, a family member, or a love interest. Never Been Chris’d, premiering Saturday night on Hallmark Channel and W Network, looks at what happens to a lifelong friendship when new players enter the chat.

Naomi (Janel Parrish) and Liz (newcomer Pascal Lamothe-Kipnes) are BFFs and business partners who experience a forced personal and professional reset when Naomi’s mom, Linda (Linda Ko), summons them home for Christmas instead of the usual annual getaway to Hawaii. Naomi’s having trouble setting boundaries with Linda, and Liz isn’t terribly keen to reconnect with her own mom, Mimi (Henriette Ivanans), now remarried and raising a teenage daughter, either.

Once home, they immediately run headlong into their shared high school crush, Chris Silver (Tyler Hynes), and the in crowd they once watched from afar. It initially feels like an awkward setup for a love triangle, and y’all know how much I am not a fan of love geometry. Thankfully, the script by Joie Botkin (3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1 Ghost) takes a more interesting path, teasing up that trope and then redirecting it with a larger exploration of their bond as one friend pursues the romance and the other pursues new friendships.

The unspoken thing between the BFFs is that back in the day, they opted out of all the high school social things, seemingly at the behest of, or in consideration of, the other, only to realize 17 years later that maybe their choices were off the mark. From there, the story opens up to allow them to revisit those decisions, and the paths not taken, and view them through the lens of their emotional intelligence at 35 vs. 15 to 18.

And by taking those hard, sometimes unflinching looks and giving voice to the unsaid things, they reframe not just their relationship with each other but also their families. They’re able to put some distance between them to find out who they are on their own now, apart, so they can be better for themselves and each other in the long run. It’s a little circuitous in spots, but it gets there.

The story also looks at the idea of what “peaking in high school” even means when we’re all a work in progress, and despite rose-colored glasses about the past, nobody then or now is perfect. It’s a lovely little ensemble movie, with the core three — Parrish, Lamoth-Kipnes, and Hynes — giving alternately tender, silly, awkward, angsty performances and supported by a solid cast.

Jeff Beesley (A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe and this weekend’s The Santa Summit) directs Botkins’ script, and the cast is rounded out with Samantha Kendrick, Uchenna Nkwonta, Quinn Greene, and Tyrell Witherspoon as former classmates who Naomi and Liz get to know for the first time.

Never Been Chris’d premieres Saturday at 8 pm/7c on Hallmark Channel in the US and W Network in Canada. It will also be available on various streaming platforms. Here are a couple of sneak peeks.

Photos courtesy of Steven Ackerman for Hallmark Media; video courtesy of Hallmark Media.