Dolly Parton, Mariah Carey and Plenty of Christmas Cheer, Now Available to Stream This weekâs recommended titles include
Christmas on the Square,
Mariah Careyâs Magical Christmas Special and more Tweet
Eyes Wide Shut
The idea was simple: barrel through a whole bunch of Christmas movies and become a glutton for cheer rather than 2020 fear. My approach wasnât formal enough to spread the word about, or hype on social media. This wasnât meant to be a marathon, because that is the path of madness. Thatâs not to say there wasnât the temptation to try and see how much Christmas could be packed into 24 hours, because you want to do something memorable for the holidays. But anyway, this is all the Christmas I could pack into a column. As always, look back at past issues of the
I didn’t go into
The Christmas Setup thinking I would tear up. I went into Lifetime’s first gay-focused holiday romance with the expectation that it would be as sweet and heartwarming as hot chocolate, but not expecting much more because this was, still, a Lifetime movie. But this adorable holiday movie was even more than that. It was touching and romantic and exactly what a queer movie holiday should be: something that sees queerness for its unique beauty and not in terms of tragedy or shame.
The plot of
The Christmas Setup is very simple. Neurotic New York lawyer Hugo (
Fran Drescher Plays Mother Matchmaker In ‘The Christmas Setup’ Lifetime Movie
The protagonist of the new Lifetime holiday movie
The Christmas Setup is New York City lawyer Hugo (
Ben Lewis) but it’s his mother Kate (
Fran Drescher,
The Nanny) who steals the show. When Hugo comes home (Milwaukee) for Christmas, Kate makes sure to have her son “bump into” his high school crush Patrick (
Blake Lee). Turns out Kate is a successful matchmaker!
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In 2000, the Hallmark Channel aired its first original holiday-themed movie, The Christmas Secret, about a professor who sets out to prove that reindeer can fly, and later meets Santa. In the 20 years since, other networks, notably Lifetime, have gotten in on the game, turning end-of-year programming into a nonstop marathon of tinsel, kisses and Christmas dreams coming true.
But the genre hasn t always brought good cheer to viewers, many of whom noticed a distinct lack of marginalized groups. As Salon s Amanda Marcotte pointed out last December, running down this year s schedule of Christmas movie offerings is like a trip into an uncanny valley of shiny-teethed, blow-dried heteronormative whiteness, with only a few token movies with characters of color. It s like watching The Stepford Wives, but scarier, since the evil plot to replace normal people with robots is never actually revealed.
Inside Weekend TV: History’s
History’s Greatest Mysteries (Saturday, 9/8c) begins a three-part series, “Roswell: First Witness,” with a new investigation of the 1947 crash that includes an attempt to decode the diary of Major Jesse Marcel, who was the first to investigate the wreckage of a rumored UFO… CBS’s
48 Hours (Saturday, 10/9c) revisits “The Hunt for the Long Island Serial Killer,” a still-cold case dating back a decade. Erin Moriarty’s report includes the first TV interview with Lily Waterman, the teenage daughter of one of the victims… Timothée Chalomet (
Call Me by Your Name, next year’s