Spaniards, Chencho has died. Televisionly. The big family It has not been part of the top of most viewed Christmas audiovisual content, neither How beautiful it is to live. Love Actually no longer marks the beginning of cathodic Christmas. They have been retired by a legion of thirty-something women with good hearts and bad luck in love who find their gingerbread prince in some picturesque town where all the neighbors are brimming with bonhomie. These almost clonal stories have been consolidating in Antena 3’s programming for years. In mid-November, the pregnant teenagers and psychopathic neighbors who take over the multiplex on Saturdays give way to Christmas-themed TV movies that guarantee a smooth nap for viewers. and good audience data for the network, despite the fact that no one admits to watching them. Something that has begun to change in recent years.
The advent of platforms has revealed the reality: the modest films made for television and overflowing with good feelings are liked, they are not consumed because it is what there is, like the confectionery in the jumble, they are good nougat. There is no longer any shame and all platforms have some of these products sharing space with incontestable classics such as Elf o Ghosts attack the boss. But it is Netflix that has made them its flag and its subscribers have responded: with hardly any promotion and with identical plots and protagonists unrecognizable by the general public, they end up becoming the most watched on the platform.
One of the great premieres of this year has been the chiripitiflautica A snowman to melt (Hot Frosty in English, title translators are the people who do the most to sustain the happiness GDP of this country). The story of a handsome snowman—I never thought I would write this sentence—who becomes a lover after a young widow places a scarf on him. Pygmalion and Galatea? Indeed. How not to be attracted to a work based on The metamorphosesby Ovid, let no one judge us. And if reviewing classic mythology is not enough encouragement, we always have the perfect abs of Dustin Milligan (the Ted Mullens of Schitt’s Creek). The writers’ meeting that found the perfect ruse to justify the presence of a half-naked guy in a Christmas romantic comedy is the TV documentary I want to see. Next to the chiseled Milligan we find Lacey Chabert, the true royalty of television movies. The actress of Five in family He is one of the stars of the subgenre and guarantees quality. It’s the equivalent of finding Jason Statham in an action movie, except that Chabert isn’t going to dismember some smiling neighbor with a machete.
This aristocracy has recently been joined by its companion in bad girls, Lindsay Lohan (en A snowman to melt There’s a nod to Lohan that will delight everyone who knows how important October 3 is. Since Miley Cyrus buried Hannah Montana dancing twerking With Robin Thicke, no reinvention had been more surprising than Lohan’s. The woman who made headlines in the 2000s thanks to her addictions and her time in prison has become an icon of the sweetest genre and she has done so with just a couple of titles. After achieving first place in viewings in more than a hundred countries thanks to his amnesiac passage through Christmas suddenlythis year has returned to Netflix with Our little secretthe story of two exes who pretend not to know each other when they are introduced at the family Christmas reunion in which they discover that His current partners are brothers.
A classic sitcom in which Christmas is only perceived through the ubiquitous decoration and which, as happens in the story of the ice heartthrob, could take place on Thanksgiving or Pentecost. Despite using as a premise a key celebration for Christianity, in this type of content there are no significant religious elements, we are not faced with You also live with illusionthe only miracle here is finding a partner outside of dating apps.
The love of one’s neighbor, but only one’s sexy neighbor, is the center of all the plots and the variations in the script are minimal: the woman may be alone for having been a bad woman and having prioritized her absurd work occupations over the fact of training. a family or perhaps the family business they run is in danger because of some voracious multinational, because many of these films hide a disconcerting anti-capitalist message. The solution comes thanks to the union of the community and the final prize is usually the heart of a kind veterinarian or a widowed pediatrician who helps the protagonist discover the true meaning of Christmas: flirting. Although consummation is stolen from us, this is not PornHub. In this type of TV movie, even kisses are banned, even if a ton of mistletoe is buried in them. Christmas television is deeply sexless.
There are two key names in the production of this content: Hallmark and Lifetime, the companies responsible for the bulk of titles that reach the grids have been feeding television stations with prudish and conservative products for years, but as the air of modernity reaches everyone, the Hallmark’s Christian universe where everyone was white, heterosexual and deeply believing, has begun to crack and a very subtle, timid diversity has slipped through its cracks, like when Pelayo’s wedding was on the cover of Readings, But instead of her husband, those posing next to her were four perfectly heterosexual women. Modern, but without going over the top.
And if in the desire to open up to more potential clients, Christmas has to be moved from the center, then it’s done. In recent years, films set during Hanukkah and even Kwanzaa, African American Heritage Week, have been added to the catalogues. “If you don’t like my Christian principles, I have others,” could be your motto. A gale of progress that has caused the once great figure of Christmas television films, the star of forced father Candace Cameron – as devout as her brother Kirk who years ago replaced teenage folders with Deuteronomy – left the Hallmark production company for the ultra-conservative Great American Family whose motto is “traditional marriage will remain at the center.” It is important to protect minority customs.
With few exceptions, these products have ridiculous budgets. They are shot in fifteen days, reusing protagonists, sets, costumes and artificial snow because, boom, They are recorded in summer. Its artistic ambition is minimal and its objective is to provide comfort emotional. Unlike in real homes, there are no divisive debates or polarization, no one gets into a brawl over regional financing or gets drunk like a Cossack. Everyone seems genuinely happy to share time and space with their families. And that is their secret, they are a massage for the soul, a safe place where nothing dark can happen. No one has defined its effect as accurately as Marge Simpson: “These movies are made for mothers with a glass of wine, a warm blanket, and a candle that smells like pine or baked apples; If you are nothing like that, get out before the next one starts.” Not even Pauline Kael would have given a better review.
Five essential titles
A prince for Christmas (Netflix). The rock on which Netflix founded its church of punch and tinsel. As well as Iron Man started the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), A prince for Christmas kicked off NCCU (the Netflix Christmas Cinematic Universe). The love story of a journalist and a crown prince became an instant success that surprised the platform and opened the door to dozens of clone productions that have the fictional kingdom of Aldovia as a link.
The season of happiness (Prime Video). Christmas is the time of year when a large number of gays and lesbians rearm to avoid a family schism. A drama that director Clea Duvall transformed into a romantic comedy into a classic of LGBT cinema starring Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis that contains all the canonical elements of the genre and in which the most transgressive thing is that the word “Christmas” is not in the qualification. A product so white and familiar it could have Candace Cameron’s seal of approval.
Christmas suddenly (Netflix). Lindsay Lohan’s Christmas Debut (Beyond Jingle Bell Rocks by bad girls) breathed new life into a genre that only needed the push of a true star. And the plot could not be more appropriate: a rich and posh heiress who, after losing her memory due to a skiing accident, discovers the true meaning of Christmas thanks to a young widowed father (because the death of a person in the prime of life) life is the only divorce that these tender productions admit).
An unforgettable Christmas. The Christmas classic that would have excited Yolanda Díaz. An executive arrives in a Nebraska town in the middle of Christmas to fire most of the workers at a tractor factory (a plot that could also be a Springsteen song), but the love of a widowed mother (shot!), the angelic Melissa Gilbert little house on the prairieaborts his evil ultra-capitalist schemes. From 1996, because neither Christmas TV movies nor their clichés are a recent fashion.
Christmas in full color (Netflix). An optometrist steals the heart of her daughter’s science teacher by helping him see Christmas in color for the first time. The cry for help from screenwriters, when color blindness is at the center of a romantic comedy, is that all the arguments have already been exhausted.