• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 11 hours ago

A new Western series from Hallmark turns the heartwarming meter up to 11.

In this series -- titled “Hope Valley: 1874” and premiering Saturday on Hallmark+ -- never is heard a four-letter word and the clothes are unsoiled all day.

“Hope Valley” is a fictional community in Canada’s Northwest Territories undergoing an influx of gold prospectors in the year 1874.

A year earlier, in 1873, the Canadian Parliament formed the North-West Mounted Police, precursor to the Royal Mounted Canadian Police.

In the show, the first class of Mounties graduates the following year -- 1874 -- and then they depart to take up assignments in the remote northwest to establish law and order in camps and settlements where there isn’t any. 

One of them will become part of the story of “Hope Valley.” The show centers mainly on two new émigrés to the region, a widowed mother, Rebecca Clarke (Bethany Joy Lenz), and her 11-year-old daughter, Sarah (Mila Morgan), who have come thousands of miles in their own covered wagon looking none the worse for wear from a city in the East that goes unnamed in Episode One.

When they reach their destination, a settlement that consists of little more than a Trading Post run by a proprietress, Hattie Quinn (Jill Hennessey), they reluctantly accept the hospitality of a rugged rancher, Tom Moore (Benjamin Ayres), who just so happens to be unmarried. 

Will Rebecca and the rancher fall in love? This is not entirely evident in Episode One, but give it time. 

For anyone familiar with Hallmark and its movies and TV series, a romance between these two is probably a good bet, although first they will have to overcome their differences.

But wait. There’s more. A handsome and fearless Mountie, Alexander Vauhgn (Lachlan Quarmby), arrives just in time to break up a fistfight between the rancher and his mortal enemy, a dreaded gold prospector who has been setting off dynamite blasts on the rancher’s land.

Will this striking Dudley Do-Right draw Rebecca’s attention away from the rugged rancher who has shown her so much kindness?

No one will ever mistake “Hope Valley: 1874” for “Deadwood,” the old HBO western series that was as grimy as “Hope Valley” is sanitized.

That is not a criticism of “Hope Valley.” Hallmark is not HBO, and vice versa. 

Like HBO, Hallmark content remains true to its brand -- romantic storytelling in diverse locations in which two people (mostly men and women, but sometimes men and men, and women and women) move somewhere and then find love they did not expect.

In this way, “Hope Valley” clicks all the Hallmark boxes no matter who Rebecca chooses. 

“Hope Valley: 1874” premieres on Saturday, March 21, on Hallmark+.