When I watch TV it’s most often a football game, classic movie or “Law & Order” reruns — preferably older “Law & Order,” with characters like Logan, Briscoe, Stone and Robinette.
My wife doesn’t share my tastes — although she will watch a Steelers or Bills game, “the clang” on “Law & Order” annoys her and she can’t abide old movies.
We are not binge watchers of series and she can’t stay awake late enough to watch a full contemporary film on, say, Netflix or Hulu. She’s also one of the last people I know who still actually watches the nightly TV news out of Buffalo — the 10 p.m. version offered on one of the channels.
But every once in a while we cross paths in front of a TV; often I have my laptop and I am not really paying attention to what she has on.
And it was during one such moment that I found myself watching my first Hallmark Channel Christmas movie.
It must have been a couple years ago. I was vaguely aware that Hallmark was running them essentially nonstop through the Christmas season, but I had never sat and watched one for even a minute or two.
As it turned out, I found myself pleasantly charmed and watched to the ending, which was wrapped and ribboned in a perfectly packaged, TV movie kind of way.
Why attempt to remember specifically which one it was? They all seem to consist of boy/girl from the city meets boy/girl from the country; city boy/girl faces some sort of life-altering dilemma, often with an ethical component mixed in; current lukewarm relationship with boyfriend/girlfriend is dismissed; after short crisis with new relationship, city boy/girl realizes that the quiet small-town life in a seemingly picture-postcard, impossibly Christmasy setting is the one for him/her — happily ever after.
And always with snow — or, rather, barely credible fake stuff laid out by the production crew.
The predictable formula is almost laughable, if it wasn’t so tried and true — and if viewers didn’t keep coming back for more and more.
Of course, Hallmark clearly avoids religious references regarding the Christmas holiday, for which the movies could certainly be open to “reason-for-the-season” criticism. But I wonder how many have noted that, more and more, the requisite caroling scenes have included Christian songs such as “Silent Night.”
Subtle, but it’s there.
For my part, I’ll watch a Hallmark movie occasionally because they are what most forms of entertainment are intended to be — a simple escape from the day’s cares and blaring political fray. But I believe they also reflect a yearning many feel today for simpler things, of loyalty, friendship, family and tradition and breaking away from the rat-race world of striving to make money to acquire more and more “things,” all while crushing the competition.
It’s not for nothing that the settings are in perfect little towns, with perfect little cafes and perfect little shops where the ideal of small-town living — and small-town business — thrives. Even the storylines that are depicted in the city are played out on perfect streets in perfect neighborhoods, with the ideal of small businesses such as coffee houses, bakeries and book stores.
Essentially, it’s the ideal that small cities and towns everywhere — from Bradford and Olean to every community throughout the Twin Tiers — are striving for, yet is not so easy to attain.
And while we love the central theme of Christmas, the Hallmark plots and characters are also something of an escape from much of fare found in TV series and films, where moral messages are more and more ambiguous — if not jettisoned altogether — and anti-heroes and even criminals are celebrated.
On Hallmark, it’s TV that hearkens back to “The Waltons” in this day of “Sons of Anarchy.”
Square? To be sure, but sometimes I like square.
(Jim Eckstrom is executive editor of Bradford Publishing Co.)
