Hallmark Channel
After Lifetime’s football-themed holiday romance Christmas in the Spotlight, which was a thinly-veiled take on the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce romance, Hallmark Channel takes to the field with its own football romance, Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, which actually has nothing to do with the pop star and the Kansas City Chiefs tight end (as many expected it to be).
Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story focuses on the Higman family, die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fans who own a Chiefs-themed gift/collectibles store in the heart of KC. The Higmans also have a more personal connection to the team as grandpa Paul (Ed Begley Jr.) met his future wife at a game, starting their own Chiefs family dynasty. The family also has another connection to the Chiefs — a knit Chiefs hat given to Paul by a sidewalk Santa that has brought the team a win every time a family member wears it during a Christmas Day game. The hat had gone missing for 50 years and the Chiefs never won another Christmas Day game but when it reappeared, they won again. And they lost the year Paul had a heart attack and was in the hospital on Christmas Day, but they won again the next year so it seems irrefutable that the hat has some magic and the family keeps it on display in the store but under close watch (and in a protective cube). Paul’s granddaughter Alana (Hunter King) may be an even more hard-core fan than the rest of the family, and is planning for the day she will take over the store, hoping to make it bigger than it already is.
What the family doesn’t know is that a newcomer to Kansas City, Derrick Taylor (Tyler Hynes), is actually a marketing director for the Chiefs and he is in town to find entrants for a contest the team is having for Biggest Fan. Derrick actually meets the family before he knows they are on the list of contestants, and they welcome him with open arms. There also seems to be an undeniable connection between him and Alana but that gets turned on its head when he reveals who he is and why he’s there, making Alana feel like she was being played, lashing out at him for being dishonest (while the family cringes and watches their chance of winning turning into a massive fumble). But she realizes he probably couldn’t reveal the truth and they make nice again, but the family finds themselves up against two other entrants — a Chiefs-themed Christmas house, and Catrick Mahomes, a cat dressed like the football player (and the cat seems to have the edge). Inviting Alana to a fan event, she brings the magical hat for the people, and the suits judging the contest, to see but in the blink of an eye it disappears prompting Derrick to try to reason with Alana that maybe the hat is just a silly superstition … and that’s all she needed to hear to know that if he didn’t believe in the hat then he didn’t believe in her. Will their developing romance get tackled? Will the family score a touchdown in the contest? Will that hat ever turn up again, or will the whole of Kansas City turn on the family, resulting in the end of their business?
Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story is a really impressive bit of filmmaking for the Hallmark Channel. If you didn’t know, Hallmark’s headquarters are in Kansas City, so teaming up with the Chiefs seems to be a natural partnership beneficial to both parties. Having the participation of the team also allowed Hallmark to film this movie in Kansas City instead of Toronto or Vancouver, where most of their movies are filmed. The company also had access to the Chiefs’ stadium, and had the participation of players Trey Smith (Chiefs Offensive Lineman), Mecole Hardman Jr. (Chiefs Wide Receiver), George Karlaftis (Chiefs Defensive End), Clyde Edwards-Helaire (Chiefs Running Back), as well as Chiefs coach Andy Reid and his wife Tammy, Chiefs Senior Team Reporter Matt McCullen, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, and a woman by the name of Donna, last name Kelce, playing a waitress at the family’s barbecue restaurant. All of this gives the story a feel of authenticity that would have been hard to replicate outside of the city.
Hallmark Channel
The story by Julie Sherman Wolfe really plays on the superstitions many die-hard fans believe when it comes to supporting their teams, putting Derrick in the shoes of the sceptic, trying to balance his own disbelief in such things with a respect for the family (and he may finds out later that maybe they aren’t as firm in their belief in the hat as Alana is). There is also a big of magical whimsy in the story with the sidewalk Santa (Abraham Benrubi) who seems to pop up everywhere and has not changed a bit since that day he gifted Paul with the hat more than 50 years ago. It’s a fun story, the romance develops naturally, and it respects the fans (at one point showing another fan with his own superstition regarding socks that helps Alana see things a little more clearly). Overall, it’s just a really charming story, and well-directed by John Putch, who uses the city and the stadium to his advantage, getting some great drone shots high above the field. One interesting aspect is the apparent use of AI to depict younger versions of Begley and other characters played by Christine Ebersole, Diedrich Bader, Megyn Price and Richard Riehle. I suppose a cheaper method than digitally de-aging the actors, but giving those flashbacks a slightly weird look.
The cast is uniformly excellent. Hunter King is perfect as the young woman whose entire life has been centered around the Chiefs because if it hadn’t been for a chance meeting at that one game, her grandparents would have never met. She holds everything about the Chiefs near and dear to her heart, and she makes us believe in her devotion to the team, the hat and her family business. She also has great chemistry with Tyler Hynes, who is just charming as all get out. He is so personable that it’s easy to see why the family could accept him so quickly, and also see him as a potential love interest for Alana. His smile lights up the screen, and even when he makes a faux pas like saying Alana’s belief in the hat’s magic is silly, you can see he immediately regrets those words and tries to correct himself. Whereas Hynes plays a bit of a self-centered jerk in Three Wiser Men and a Boy, here he is a down-to-earth guy that just about everyone he meets falls in love with.
It’s also great to see veterans like Begley, Ebersole and Riehle on screen, with Begley getting some nice, grandfatherly moments with Alana, giving the story some real heartfelt emotion. Bader and Price are also fun as Alana’s parents, and Mary Beth McDonough (best known as Erin on The Waltons back in the day) gets a few funny bits as she tries to push her special fruit cake loaf on the family (and King’s reaction upon finding out it’s supposed to be warmed up is priceless). Even Donna Kelce does a nice job in delivering her lines.
You can tell this was a very special project for Hallmark as they promoted the heck out of it, and devoted an entire day of programming to the premiere with live segments from a Hallmark fan event in Kansas City. Everyone put a lot of care and consideration into the production, paid service to the Chiefs fans and the team, and stacked the cast with a group of familiar and talented actors. It has to be said — Hallmark scored a touchdown with this movie.
Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, and is rated TV-G. The film is available On Demand and is streaming on Peacock.
Trailer | Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story
Hallmark Channel
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