• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, October 19, 2022

Here’s a fun game to usher in the holiday season: From their descriptions below, guess which network will be airing each of these upcoming made-for-TV holiday movies.

Description No. 1:  This is the holiday tale of Audrey, an enthusiastic Christmas-obsessed fitness instructor teaching classes at her beloved, financially beleaguered community center in quaint Mistletoe, Montana. She begins a holiday romance with a charming, mysterious businessman, complicating his plans to turn the center into a more financially profitable resort property.

Description No. 2:  Real estate exec Erika travels to Alaska during Christmastime to acquire a bed and breakfast, only to discover that it’s owned by her ex. While there, she finds herself falling in love with the town and quite possibly him.

Description No. 3:  When ambitious food correspondent Carly Hayes gets a shot at her own TV show, nothing goes as planned. She’s sent to Angel Heights to help Grant Quinn, a perfectionist, attention-shy chef, reopen his family’s beloved diner and film it as a holiday special pilot for her television show. Thanks to Carly, Grant will not only re-open his restaurant, but most probably his heart too.

If these plot descriptions sound like a hundred other made-for-TV Christmas movies that have taken over the holiday season for the better part of the past decade, then that’s the point.

To the uninitiated, and possibly the initiated too, all of these movies are pretty much the same. And yet, they must be popular. Otherwise, they would not be produced in such great numbers every year, if at all.

Without further ado, the answers to the quiz offered above: Description No. 1: “Fit For Christmas,” coming to CBS December 4; Description No. 2: “A Cozy Christmas Inn,” coming to Hallmark Channel October 28; and Description No. 3: “A Recipe For Joy,” coming to Lifetime December 9.

The photo above is from “Fit For Christmas,” but it could just as easily be from a couple of dozen of these TV Christmas movies.

“Fit For Christmas” is the first of three new ones coming to CBS on consecutive Sunday nights in December.

The other two are “Must Love Christmas” on December 11 and “When Christmas Was Young” on December 18.

CBS is a relative newcomer to TV’s annual competition of original Christmas movies. This is only the second consecutive season in which CBS has presented these kinds of movies. But they have long been associated with Hallmark Channel and Lifetime.

Hallmark pioneered them in 2009 and branded its annual celebration of the year-end holidays “Countdown to Christmas.”

Starting in 2012, Lifetime counter-punched with its own string of original Christmas movies branded as “It’s a Wonderful Lifetime.”

Other new originals on the Lifetime schedule this season include “A Christmas Spark,” “A Christmas Treasure,” “A Show-Stopping Christmas,” “A Country Christmas Harmony,” “Christmas On Mistletoe Lake” (the second reference to “mistletoe” in this blog) and “Cloudy With A Chance Of Christmas.” 

On Hallmark, look for: “We Wish You A Married Christmas,” “Ghosts Of Christmas Always,” “Lights, Camera, Christmas,” “A Royal Corgi Christmas” and “A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe.” 

The TV Blog is willing to bet anybody that even a TV movie about a Christmas cookie catastrophe will nevertheless end happily.