william ahearn
2021-05-04 04:37:12 UTC
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PermalinkThe only reason that I even know about this Hallmark series is because I'm an obsessive crossword puzzle solver and for a while after this series started all the cruciverbalists were chatting about how Will Shortz – the crossword puzzle editor of The New York Times – was a consultant. There might be a promise of some sort in that fact, but damned if I could find any sign of it.
The gist of these Hallmark mysteries is that a woman – it's always a woman – has a profession – eg, baker, a gourmet, realtor, a bookstore owner, et al – and is always discovering bodies and becoming a sleuth to solve the crime. In this series, the woman is a crossword puzzle editor working on a game show when her ex-boyfriend – who is a police detective – stops by with flowers to apologize for something – apparently from the previous movie – and lo and behold the emcee of the gameshow is murdered.
What follows is the least convincing crime movie that I've ever seen. The writing, the characters, the acting, the costumes, are completely off the rack. It makes Murder, She Wrote look like an Ingmar Bergman film. There must be something that works for somebody with these films since Hallmark keeps cranking them out and then making new ones.