Hallmark.
Just mention the word and it conjures up a slew of Norman Rockwellian ideals - baseball, hot dogs, apple pie. The entire gamut.
Hallmark is cheesy and cloying to some, but it’s what America is all about to others.
Either way, between 63 years of Hallmark Hall of Fame presentations on TV and its eponymous cable channel, Hallmark has to be one of the most successful branding campaigns in TV history.
It all goes back to Hallmark Cards, the Kansas City, Mo.-based company founded in 1910 that specializes in feel-good greeting cards you buy when (old slogan) “you care enough to send the very best” because (current slogan) “life is a special occasion.” Hallmark Hall of Fame is a Hallmark-sponsored anthology series that debuted on NBC on Christmas Eve 1951 with an original opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors. It’s the longest-running prime-time series in the history of television.
Hallmark Channel began as two separate religious channels that shared time on a single cable channel starting in 1992.
Over the years, there were name changes, ownership changes and programming changes.
It became the Faith and Values Channel in 1995, the Odyssey Channel in 1996 and Hallmark Channel in 2001, when religious programming was dropped in favor of family and drama programs and classic sitcoms.
The latest figures show almost86 million American households (75 percent) receive the Hallmark Channel and its kinder, gentler family programming that includes TV movies, miniseries, syndicated series and lifestyle shows.
A double dose of good old family programming is what’s in store tonight, with a new series on the Hallmark Channel and a new Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation on ABC.
We’ll start with the series.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered premieres at 7 p.m. today on Hallmark Channel and stars Eric Mabius, Kristin Booth, Crystal Lowe and Geoff Gustafson.
If the title sounds familiar, it should. The series springs from a 2013 TV movie of the same name (and starring this same cast) from Martha Williamson, head writer and executive producer of the beloved long-running CBS drama Touched by an Angel.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered is a clever combination of romance, comedy and drama that follows the lives of four postal employees who work in the dead letter office.
They turn into detectives and track down the intended recipients of undeliverable mail. The sleuthing takes them out of the office and into a world “where the letters and packages can save lives, solve crimes, reunite old loves and change futures by arriving late but somehow always on time.”
The crew:
Mabius (Ugly Betty) stars as Oliver O’Toole, a genius postal detective and the group’s leader.
Booth (Foolproof) plays Shane McInerney, a technophile who brings much-needed 21st-century sensibility to the gang.
Lowe (Final Destination 3) portrays Rita Haywith, a free-spirited, girl-next-door type who has a photographic memory.
Gustafson (Primeval: New World) is lovable Norman Dorman, a master of conventional research methods.
There’s a treat for those tuning in to tonight’s premiere. Valerie Harper (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) guest stars as Theresa Capodiamonte, a legendary post office supervisor who makes a grand entrance in time to oversee our band of gallant postal detectives as they unravel a mystery that has put a boy’s life in danger.
In the episode “Time To Start Livin’,” Oliver and the team investigate a letter from a 10-yearold boy who has been separated from his grandmother. The boy is alerting his grandmother that he is running away.
Theresa then prepares to take a risk of her own, “as she realizes she has a lifelong dream she’s never pursued and makes her first dance steps in that direction.” Hmmm. Do you suppose this has anything to do with the 74-year-old Harper’s inspirational appearance last fall on Dancing With the Stars?
In My Dreams airs at 8 p.m. today on ABC. The Hallmark Hall of Fame movie stars Katharine McPhee and Mike Vogel as the perfect couple.
There’s just one little problem for the lovebirds: They haven’t met yet, at least not in person.
They’ve only seen each other in their dreams (hence the title).
How will that ever, ever be resolved?
Viewers will know McPhee as runner-up in the 2006 season of American Idol (Taylor Hicks won that year), and as Karen Cartwright in NBC’s Smash.
Vogel played a pilot on the ABC drama Pan Am, and currently portrays Dale “Barbie” Barbara in the CBS science-fiction drama Under the Dome.
For more on the movie and a photo of the stars, turn to The TV Column in today’s Style section.
TV Week, Pages 85 on 04/20/2014