Hallmark Channel is one of those networks that television fans either love or hate. That’s because it hosts sappy stories and often features small-town love stories and mysteries. For everyone who finds the movies sappy or cheesy though, there are just as many TV watchers who find them heartfelt and uplifting.
At the start of the decade, Hallmark released about a dozen or so movies a year. Now, the network, as well as its offering Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, releases close to 100 movies a year. They can’t all be masterpieces, but these 10 are the ones create its own list.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Higher Ground (67%)
The Signed, Sealed, Delivered movies are made for Hallmark’s Movies And Mysteries, but like a lot of the franchises used on that network, also often make their way to the flagship network. These movies focus on a group called the Postables who take on mysteries associated with lost mail.
Higher Ground is one of two movies from the series on the list. In this story, the team tries to unravel the mystery behind a love letter mailed by a man who became homeless following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation in New Orleans. Higher Ground leads off a string of 67% rated movies. In fact, half of Hallmark’s top ten is made from movies with that same rating.
The Julius House: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery (67%)
Candace Cameron Bure is a Hallmark Channel darling. If you’ve seen a movie on the network, there’s a good chance you’ve seen her. In addition to appearing in plenty of their holiday fare, she also plays the title character in the Aurora Teagarden Mystery movies.
Aurora is a librarian who always seems to find herself caught in the middle of a mystery. Here, she finally finds her dream home, but when she decides to buy it, discovers that it comes with its own mystery. A family that lived there vanished without a trace.
The Color Of Rain (67%)
Like Candace Cameron Bure, Lacey Chabert is also a Hallmark favorite. While she usually appears in the feel-good romance movies, this one is a bit more tragic.
Chabert stars as Gina, a recently widowed mother of two. As she starts volunteering at her kids’ school to be closer to them, she discovers that another family experienced a similar tragedy around the same time. Michael lost his wife just a few weeks after she lost her husband, and his three kids attend the same school. Both families adjust to their new lives and grieve together over the course of the next year.
A Harvest Wedding (67%)
This is one of the most Hallmark movies to ever air on Hallmark. A Harvest Wedding features a wedding planner in New York who gets a job planning a wedding for a woman who happens to be from the same hometown. The woman wants her wedding on her family farm… which happens to be run by the wedding planner’s ex-boyfriend.
As a bonus, this Teen Wolf, plays the wedding planner. Victor Webster, the one-time bad boy of Mutant X, plays her ex.
Love Begins (67%)
The Love Comes Softly series has been a hit for Hallmark. The network has created a plethora of movies that take place before and during the television series as well. Love Begins is one of the movies that works as a prequel to the series.
In it, two cowboys end up arrested in a small town as a result of their fight causing property damage. While one leaves the town behind, the other stays and tries to work off his debt. He does it by working at a farm owned by two women. Eventually, cowboy Clark falls for farmgirl Ellen, and the events of the series are set in motion.
Morning Show Mystery: Mortal Mishaps (71%)
Morning Show Mystery is another Hallmark property that has many movies to its name. Featuring Holly Robinson Peete as the main character, the storylines often see her fall into mysteries to save herself or friends.
Mortal Mishaps features her character, Billie Blessings, going to bat for one of her employees when they are accused of murdering one of the network executives who died of food poisoning. Billie isn’t just the host of a morning show segment, after all, she’s also a chef who owns her own restaurant, and she won’t have her staff accused of something she knows they didn’t do.
The Watsons Go To Birmingham (76%)
Based on the beloved novel of the same name, the Watson family travels to Alabama from Michigan in 1963. They find that life for African Americans is very different for them in Birmingham than back home.
The trip was supposed to be to help a way to help the oldest son, Byron, so he could be on his best behavior as the family paid a visit to grandma. Instead, the visit opened the eyes of the whole family and changed their lives. It’s far from the usual romantic-comedies the network is known for, and it’s no surprise that it ranks so high in the top ten.
The Edge Of The Garden (77%)
Leading off the top three Hallmark movies is this ghostly tale. It sounds like your average Hallmark movie at first. A man obsessed with his job, Brian is in for a shock when his fiancee leaves him. He decides to buy an old cottage in Maine and fix it up. That’s where the ghostly tale starts.
When fresh flowers start to show up in the cottage even though he hasn’t fixed up the garden, he gets worried. Brian starts to see a woman at the edge of the garden who appears to be living in the past - 50 years in the past to be exact.
Finding A Family (80%)
The top two movies might show just a bit of viewer bias. Each movie only has 13 ratings, leaving them slightly skewed. That being said, they fit right into the best of Hallmark.
Inspired by a true story, Finding A Family centers on a teenager searching for a way to achieve his dreams. Though his mother was an intellectual that fostered a love of learning in him, a car accident left her so severely depressed that she was deemed unfit to parent. Alex grew up in group homes and foster care, following his dream of getting into an Ivy League school by taking on rigorous material. He sees his dreams slipping away when he finds out his next foster family will be outside of the school district that has the most rewarding curriculum and decides to try to find a family to foster him on his own.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Home Again (88%)
This movie series opened Hallmark’s top 10, and it closes it out as well. This installment is, of course, the Postables tracking down another mystery.
Instead of a lost love letter, this time, it’s a package. Inside the package is a vase that three little girls attempted to sell when they wanted to save the family farm. Years later, the Postables want to unravel the vase’s background since, even though it had been in the same family for generations, that’s not where it got its start.
