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.

Grace (Jodie Sweetin) runs a year-round Christmas store and is now the third generation of her family to run the town’s Christmas parade, now in its 50th year. It’s become so well-known that this year it’ll be featured on national (morning) television! Grace really has her hands full. She wasn’t counting on Tom (Jay Brazeau), aka The Best Santa Ever (per the New York Times?), pulling a slip and fall ahead of the big day and breaking his arm in two places. Oh the brittle bones of the elderly, fudging up Christmas. The network is threatening to pull their coverage without him (and strangely, they came before they knew he existed), so Grace is under a lot of pressure to cast a new, perfect Santa. The good news: Tom actually runs a Santa school in the off season. The bad news: this late in the game, they’re all booked up. Curse their in-demand professionalism!

You may have seen this coming, but there is one man who would be a fitting replacement, Tom’s son, Ben (Eric Winter), who is a fully trained but non-practicing Santa. Having been raised to one day take over the fat man’s suit, Ben came to resent Christmas and all things Santa, so stays away for the holidays, and has no problem flat-out refusing their request, even in the face of some pretty pathetic pleading. Determined not to fail, Grace pursues him all the way to Boston, but while she fails to secure him, they do experience some inclement weather and get snowed in in a place that just happens to rediscover his dormant Christmas spirit.

Will the roads reopen in time to save the parade? Will the mayor’s son relinquish his spot on Santa’s sleigh? Will Ben revive his Christmas spirit or will Grace lose hers? My friends, the Hallmark channel has it all, and it is truly yours to discover. Happy holidays!

Holly (Ashley Greene) works in a vintage shop with her best friend, Megan. While stocking shelves with new thrift store finds, they come across a charm bracelet in a coat pocket – surely not meant to have been donated away, it must have snagged on something and fallen off. Holly suspects that the bracelet’s owner is missing it keenly as the charms all seem to meaningful in one way or another – two mark the birth of a child, so the rest must be life milestones as well. Vowing to track down the owner and return the bracelet by Christmas, Holly hits the streets of New York City, because how hard could it be to find a braceletless woman in such a small town?

First stop, her father’s jewelry store, where he uses a loupe to unearth the first clue. There she also runs into Greg (Brendan Penny), whom she’d “met cute” the night before when he spilled her cake, but who turns out to be a crack reporter who’s looking for some “soft news” to report on – something exactly like a missing bracelet and the search to return it to its rightful owner. Reluctantly, Holly agrees to work with Greg, and soon the two of them are chasing down clues all over the city, even dressing up in 1930s gear to board a steam engine for absolutely no reason a phone call wouldn’t have done in a fraction of the time and effort. This poor time management eventually catches up to them. Greg is, after all, working toward a Christmas deadline. Meanwhile, the two are enjoying spending time together. She meets his mom, he admires the jewelry she makes in her spare time, intimacies are exchanged (though no kisses, obvi).

Will Holly find the bracelet owner before the holidays? Has the owner just been going around with a naked wrist this whole time? How does Greg not know what a trilby is? How many scammers will pretend the bracelet is theirs? And will Holly’s pregnant friend that I’ve yet to mention possibly hold in her baby until the mystery is solved? All this AND MORE on the Hallmark channel.

When her family’s beloved eatery, The Starlight Café, is slated for demolition, Annie (Kimberley Sustad) vows to put a stop to it before Christmas. She storms the offices of Holt Enterprises to get their eviction notice rescinded and the demolition cancelled, but gets mistaken for someone else. William Holt (Paul Campbell), you see, is the heir apparent, but like a typical rich kid has spent most of his life just coasting by on his charm and his family name, relegating the hard work to his long-suffering assistant, Lyle. Daddy Holt is understandably worried about leaving him the company, so he decides to hire a lawyer to follow Will around, solving any legal messes as he makes them. Yes, it’s the most ridiculous plan ever hatched, and that’s saying something on the Hallmark channel.

Anyway, Annie is mistaken for that lawyer. But she is a lawyer, coincidentally, so Will proposes to hire her, fulfilling his father’s obligation without actually having someone meddlesome breathing over his shoulder, and in return, he promises to shut down the demolition plans. Even more preposterously, in her fake position as his guardian lawyer, one of his legal messes somehow involves her organizing an elaborate Christmas fundraiser…and then Will gets roped in too. Does it make sense? No! But they’re doing it and they’re falling in love while doing it. Which, technically speaking should probably be its own “legal mess,” but let’s go along with the spirit of the film and pretend that logic is overrated.

But wait: what if Will can’t hold up his end of the bargain? What if The Starlight Café gets plowed out of existence and this whole thing was for nothing? That’s not super romantic, is it? Total boner killer. Well, lady boner. What a conundrum! What will happen to our star crossed lovers? Can a lawyer get disbarred for posing as a different lawyer? Are all relationships based on business deals doomed to fail? Find out next on the Hallmark channel.