Hallmark Movies Are About to Take Over Your Entire Life and Personality

Actor Jonathan Bennett has a theory: “There are two types of people in the world: people who watch Hallmark movies, and then there are liars.”

Bennett is a history-making member of the Hallmark movie, having starred in the channel’s first Christmas movie featuring a gay couple and now one of the most popular faces of the network. Bennett cracked his joke about the nation’s craven Hallmark obsession while at the Television Critics Association press tour, speaking to journalists and critics alongside network executives and some of its biggest stars: Lacey Chabert, Ashley Williams, Luke Macfarlane, Tyler Hynes, and more.

Each was promoting new shows and movies, but as a collective, they were there to usher in what—after a day of learning about where the brand is heading—I’ve decided to refer to as The Complete and Total Hallmark Takeover of Your Life and Personality.

That might sound hyperbolic. (Brace yourself: It’s not.) It might, to many, sound heavenly. You may be one of the hordes of people who gleefully skip to their couch when the annual Countdown to Christmas begins in the fall, setting up permanent residence there until Santa returns to the North Pole months later. Get ready for that experience to surge into overdrive, and soon. As Lisa Hamilton Daly, executive vice president of programming, told reporters, September is “basically Christmastime at Hallmark.” And so much Christmas is coming.

There will be 40 *new* holiday movies rolled out this season, as well as a Christmas-set series with a massive ensemble, Holidaze. For the first time, Hallmark is diving into the reality TV space, unofficially in a direct effort to appeal to me, specifically. The suite of series wisely employs the aforementioned network stars as hosts.

Home Is Where the Heart Is capitalizes on Macfarlane’s skill as a woodworker to do heartwarming home renovations. Small Town Setup will be hosted by Williams, who serves as a matchmaker attempting to craft Hallmark-style romances in real life. Celebrations With Lacey Chabert will throw surprise parties honoring people making a positive impact in their communities, hosted by… well, Lacey Chabert. Bennett and Melissa Peterman will reign over Finding Mr. Christmas, a talent search for the next “Hallmark Hunk” to star in a new holiday movie. (I’ve interviewed the three finalists. Related: I now have three very intense new crushes.)

And as if Hallmark didn’t have enough of a stranglehold on the mainstream Americana demographic, it’s partnering with the NFL and the Kansas City Chiefs for a holiday romance, currently shooting, inspired by Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, called Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story. “I have not had a direct conversation, but he is a huge fan of the brand,” Lara Krug, the Chiefs’ vice president and chief marketing officer, told me, smiling mischievously. (The answer as to whether any members of the Kelce family or Chiefs stars like Patrick Mahomes will cameo was, essentially, a wink.)

A programming spree is just part one of the diabolical assault of heartwarmingness. Hallmark announced Thursday that it is launching a standalone streaming service, Hallmark+. Yep, another one to subscribe to! Hallmark+ will not only house the channel’s content and new original programming, but will, as one exec said, put a “gamified lens” on the content-watching experience. Subscribers can earn rewards like coupons to Hallmark Gold Crown stores, free greeting cards and gifts, and exclusive access to the brand’s live experiences. (Did you know that there is a Hallmark-themed cruise? Or that there’s a Hallmark fan convention in Kansas City?)

As Annie Howell, Hallmark’s chief communications officer, said, the brand’s goal is to “create a space where everyone can live the Hallmark lifestyle.”

If you’re someone like me, who, after spending hours receiving all of this information, might think, “Am I being initiated into a cult?,” then you might also have had my instinct to try to garner an understanding of what it is about this programming and these people that is so irresistible that so many people are ready and willing to give themselves over to that lifestyle.

There’s one easy answer: The brand’s earnestness is, at the hellish time we’re living through, an appealing fantasy to retreat to and pretend is real, even if fleetingly. The attraction of the cynicism- and conniving-free network’s reality TV gambit is that “there isn’t anywhere else to go for really nice unscripted TV,” David Stephanou, Hallmark’s head of unscripted, said.

The stars themselves radiated some sort of mystical joyous energy throughout the day that, frankly, I’m not used to receiving—and, at this point in life, am perhaps physically and emotionally incapable to receive. The executives and the actors are all self-aware and humorous about the brand’s wholesome reputation and its fans’ gonzo level of enthusiasm. Peterman had me in stitches when, following a runaway train of fawning over Chabert’s kindness and talent, she quipped, “Every time Lacey Chabert sneezes, a kitten is born.”

They handled questions about their history of not portraying diversity in its casting and storytelling with pride about the recent push to aggressively rectify that. (“We’re looking for the next Hallmark holiday hunk, and I’m a Hallmark holiday hunk, and I’m pretty friggin’ gay,” Bennett said, laughing, about the network’s plans for inclusive casting.) The reaction to any mention of or question about conservative rival network Great American Family was to channel Mariah Carey: Basically, “We don’t know her.”

At one point on Thursday, a colleague-who-shall-not-be-named and I were doing the 2024 journalists’ equivalent of being the cool kids smoking outside the high school gym: bitchily DM-ing each other on Slack. “Are there actually people who are this fucking happy?” she wrote.

I’ve seen it in the flesh, and even my jaded-ass self can admit they really are. And now, apparently, starting in September for an $80 yearly subscription, plus the cost of booking a cruise and the several months of PTO required to actually watch all of this content, you can be this fucking happy, too.