Self-help author Rachel Kennedy (Natalie Knepp) is in town to promote her new book. After her previous effort’s lackluster sales, her manager is eager to keep her on-brand and brings on event planner Jack (Michael Rady) to help focus their launch. Soon, however, it will be Rachel’s focus that’s wavering, after a kind stranger named Joy (Bonnie Bedelia) saves her life from a brush with death.

Rachel feels drawn to Joy and wants somehow to repay the kindness, but Joy thinks Rachel’s message is rather anti-Christmas and not in the spirit of giving. Joy is, unsurprisingly, quite a charitable soul herself, but her saintly ways don’t impress Rachel’s manager, who thinks Joy is an unwelcome distraction. Jack, however, is quite drawn to Rachel’s orbit and her new zest for helping others. They’ll get to know each other through the usual gateways – decorating gingerbread houses and the like. It’s the Christmas equivalent of putting Ikea furniture together. If your relationship can survive, it, you’re solid gold.

Will Rachel reconnect with the only family she’s got left? What kind of gigantic bug is up her manager’s ass? What sort of tragic back story is Joy hiding? Will Rachel’s book fly off the shelves? Who put the red-headed guy in an orange sweater? And if Jack’s allergic to chocolate, is his life truly worth living?

At Christmas, all things are possible, including forgiveness – forgiving others for their trespasses, and forgiving ourselves for ours.

Lauren (Candace Cameron Bure) has worked very hard her whole life to be able to walk in her father’s footsteps, following him in a surgical fellowship that she ends up very narrowly losing – and of course it was the only one to which she’d applied. Not keen to delay her career by 6 months, and determined to show her mother she’s capable of living outside of her meticulously planned box, she accepts the only fellowship still vacant at such a late date. It’s at a hospital in a small town in Alaska.

As it turns out, she won’t merely be a doctor serving the town’s hospital, she’ll be the sole doctor in the entire town. Her office hours are overrun with people who’ve been saving up their ailments in the absence of a doctor. Good thing the hunky town handyman Andy (David O’Donnell) is so helpful. He’s really showing her the ropes!

Two things, though: 1. although Lauren seems to be settling in quite well as the town’s busy and beloved only doctor, her father keeps pursuing the fellowship back home, so she’s always got at least one foot out the door, and 2. this small Alaskan town seems to be hiding some significant secrets. Will Lauren hang around long enough to find out what it is? Can her new relationship with handy Andy survive if she goes back home? Does doctoring even count if it’s not the kind of doctoring her dad did? Is the only kind of scarf that counts the kind that’s made of wool? These burning questions answered and more when you tune in to the Hallmark channel for Christmas Under Wraps.

Melissa Merry and Brian Bright are the hosts of America’s #1 morning TV show; they play a pair of beaming colleagues for the camera but the minute it stops rolling they’re actually always at each other’s throats. Melissa (Alison Sweeney) prefers the rehearsed approach, while Brian (Marc Blucas) likes to improvise, and insists they’re both better without a teleprompter, which may be true, but his lack or preparation does mean Melissa often has to swoop in and save him. After spending the last year squabbling, the network is honouring Brian’s request to break his contract. As Melissa searches for a replacement, the two are sent to a festive small town where they’ll be shooting live on location for the last week before Christmas, and the last week of their show together. They’ll have to pretend to get along for the sake of appearances, which is a rule neither is keen to follow.

Their taped segments include all your holiday favourites: ice skating, gingerbread making, ugly Christmas sweater wearing. And somewhere amid all this forced cheer, Melissa and Brian will actually start to get cozy and discover there’s more to each other than they thought.

Will the Merry & Bright morning show live to see another day? Have you ever seen a hotel room so overwhelmingly decorated for Christmas? Is the only thing worse than an ugly Christmas sweater an ugly Christmas Hawaiian shirt? Did Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan sue when they realized how closely this relationship mimics theirs?

This Hallmark movie truly has it all, even very questionable morals when the show’s producer decides to invade her stars’ privacy, and send spy cameras to capture their romantic declaration live, without their knowledge or consent. It’s dicey. It’s risky. But will it pay off???

Historian Jessica (Elizabeth Henstridge) is hired to honour the great tradition of Christmas at the Plaza hotel with a holiday exhibit. The archive room is as vast as it is dusty and she hardly knows where to begin. Luckily head bellman Reginald (Bruce Davison) tells her about the lobby Christmas tree’s traditional finial d’arbre, the beautiful custom ornament that tops the tree. Each year at the Plaza, a new and unique finial sits atop the tree for all to admire. Creating her display around these beautiful baubles, she begins to piece together a story that unites Christmases across the decades and generations. There’s only one problem: one finial is missing, and even the records are blank. What happened in 1969, and how will Jessica find out?

A second piece of luck: Nick (Ryan Paevey) is the handsome decorated hired to deck the Plaza’s halls this years, and he’s on board to help her sort out her exhibit AND crack the mystery. The only thing surer than these two falling in love along the way is that the mystery of the missing ornament will also be romantical in nature. It is the Hallmark way. It’s what we’re all here for, and Hallmark delivers as assuredly as Santa.

Julia Duffy was a pleasure to see as the Plaza’s humourless manager. There was a surprising Alfred Hitchcock Easter egg, a nod to North by Northwest, if you’re playing close attention. The decorations are fabulous, the Christmas karaoke is baffling, and Ms. Henstridge sports the perfect shade of berry for a holiday lip look.