[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
As the calendar turns to August, Hallmark Channel is packing away the Christmas decorations until October and resumes regular programming this Saturday with the beginning of a three-week film event. Providence Falls is a triple movie feature based on the titular book series by Jude Deveraux and Tara Sheets. Tapping into The Way Home fascination with time travel and the angelic elements that are typically reserved for holiday fare, the film series (or miniseries if you’re a GenX er because the films have a singular, continuous throughline) could seem diabolical on the face of it, but thankfully, it isn’t. It’s a little Somewhere in Time, which if you have never seen, correct that life choice, mixed in with Touched by An Angel and a police procedural.
Set in dual timelines — 1844 Ireland and present-day Providence Falls, Oregon, the story follows a pair of long ago lovers torn apart and seemingly condemned to stay that way. In the past timeline, Liam O’Conner (Lachlan Quarmby), a rogue and a thief, falls in love with Cora McLeod (Katie Stevens), a fiery but sheltered aristocrat’s daughter, who is promised in marriage to a man she barely knows. Their plan to make a new life together in America is thwarted, and the consequences of that set off ripples through time, forcing everyone to relive the events of the past.
As the instigator of those troubles, Liam doesn’t get off easy, and instead, the Angels of Destiny (just go with it), Samael (Keegan Connor Tracy) and Agon (Amitai Marmorstein), task him to fix what he broke, with his soul at risk if he fails. The how of that is a bit tricky as they drop him into the now and assign him to help the modern version of Cora fall in love with Finn (Evan Roderick), the modern version of the jilted fiance from back in the day. I KNOW. Me, too. (It’s all very “I came across time for you, Sarah,” but without the threat of a robot armageddon).
Liam is of course nope, nope, nope about that but he’s also buying into the party line about what’s best for Cora’s future, and you know, the whole world and whatnot. To add insult to injury, he remembers everything. While she’s got some Spidey tingles here and there that she chalks up to recurring dreams, she otherwise just finds Liam awfully familiar.
And while Cora likes Finn just fine, there’s something electric — sometimes literally — about Liam. So the triangle isn’t ever really a triangle and is soon enough a quadrangle, which makes it so much easier to watch play out.
Another degree of difficulty to the proceedings is that in this timeline, Liam is Cora’s newly reassigned detective partner and alongside his angelic mission to shove her toward Finn, they also have a human crime to solve. Plus, Cora is facing a choice about what her professional calling should be, and how to be of service in a different way.
Finally, there may or may not be another otherworldy faction at work trying to keep Liam from succeeding on his ethereal task. It’s a lot. You can see why they needed four and a half hours (without commercials) to tell it.
It’s a sometime fun and funny, sometimes thrilling, sometimes ridiculously corny, sometimes swoony watch. So, there’s legitimately something for everyone on your couch. Teresa Kale wrote the teleplays for all three films, and the first and third were directed by Lucie Guest with the second directed by Siobhan Devine.
The cast is rounded out with several familiar faces, including Felicia Simon, Paul McGillon, Matty Finochio, Samer Salem, Jessica Sipos, Fulvio Cecere, Darcy Laurie, and in a couple of fun but integral cameos I will not spoil, Niall Matter and Brendan Penny.
Providence Falls airs August 2, 9, and 16 at 8 pm/7c on Hallmark Channel and streaming on various outlets in the US, where it will also be available on Hallmark+ the day after; and on W Network and streaming on StackTV in Canada. Here are a couple of sneak peeks.
Photos courtesy of Hallmark Media and Reckless Pictures; videos courtesy of Hallmark Media.
