• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, September 9, 2024

The Hallmark TV brand is all over this new series about rival fried chicken restaurants in a small southern town.

As indicated by its title, “The Chicken Sisters” is a family affair. Through marriage and other divisions between family members, the two chicken joints are poised to take their southern-fried feud to basic cable.

Their destination is a fanciful reality-competition show on a fictional food network called “Kitchen Clash,” which pits rival restaurants against one another in a fight to the finish.

Here in the real world, it is a great idea for a Food Network show (unless the network is already doing it, unbeknownst to me).

On the fictional show, there is a grand prize of $100,000 at stake, but something more too. 

Just like the restaurants that find a whole new level of success after getting showcased on TV -- most notably on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins & Dives” -- at least one of the rival chicken shacks in “The Chicken Sisters” sees the possibility of franchise riches.

“The Chicken Sisters” is earmarked for Hallmark+, the streaming venture of the Hallmark networks. 

The cast includes TV vets Lea Thompson (above photo, left) and Wendie Malick (photo, right). 

Veteran actress Margo Martindale -- a standout in such series as “Justified” and “The Americans” (and so much else) -- serves as narrator. 

She may even appear in the show, but only her voice was heard in the series premiere previewed by the TV Blog on Friday.

“Kitchen Clash” is not the show’s only nod to the world of video content today. The other is a fictional show called “Sparkling,” in which two young women guide homeowners in the art of reorganizing their homes.

One of the young women is one of the sisters of “The Chicken Sisters” who returns to the small town she hoped never to see again after she is fired from the “Sparkling.”

Her homecoming is not a sentimental return to her roots like in so many made-for-TV Hallmark movies, at least not at the outset.

The TV Blog has no doubt she will learn the importance of family eventually in “The Chicken Sisters,” but the real reason she has come home is because she detects an opportunity for continuing her TV career by maneuvering herself into “Kitchen Clash.”

“The Chicken Sisters” manages to be a comment on the world of reality, personality-based TV while also emphasizing the family values that are a hallmark of Hallmark.

“The Chicken Sisters” premieres Tuesday, September 10, on Hallmark+.