Hallmark Channel
If you’re a long-time viewer of Hallmark Channel movies, you know that most of them are set in very idealized/fantasized versions of ‘Smalltown America’, places that conjure up warm memories of places most of us have never been but believe that is what these small towns are like because that’s what we’ve always seen on TV, making us feel like they are places we’d love to live. Every now and then, though, Hallmark ventures beyond the shores of the U.S. and the latest ‘Countdown to Christmas’ movie is a perfect example of that, transporting viewers across the Atlantic to the Emerald Isle for ‘Tis the Season to Be Irish.
The story focuses on Rose Walsh (Fiona Gubelmann), an interior designer/house flipper whose life is spent buying homes, fixing them up, and re-selling them with no real roots of her own. Rose prefers to move around, telling herself she takes after her mother who was a free-spirit but put down her own roots after she married and started a family. Rose feels her mother cheated herself out of her dreams so Rose is now doing that for her. But could there be something deeper, possibly a fear of commitment especially when it comes to romance? Her business partner spies a cottage in Ireland for sale, but Rose is familiar with the tactic of listing these rundown cottages way below market value to entice house flippers to come and spend a ton of money refurbishing and reselling them to help boost the local economy. No deal. But a second cottage pops up and it’s in the town Rose’s mother once visited, Dunclare. If Rose wants to feel more connected to her mother, this is the perfect opportunity but an offer is made before Rose can hit the button. So she calls the agent personally and offers 5,000 Euros more than the listing — SOLD!
When she arrives in Dunclare, she almost immediately butts heads with a local man who offers to give her a ride and when she finally arrives at the address … he’s there waiting for her. He’s the agent, Sean O’Loughlin (Eoin Macken). This is awkward. Even more awkward is the condition of the cottage, definitely not what Rose saw in the photos on the listing. Was she a victim of bait and switch? After seeing the interior, Rose almost immediately wants to sell, but she doesn’t seem to have read all the fine print of the terms of her purchase which Sean warned her to do when she first spoke to him on the phone. One of the terms is that it has to be her primary residence, but it has no electricity or running water. She books a room at a local inn where she meets someone else who bought a ‘fixer upper’ and is shocked to learn that her stay in Dunclare may be as long as 18 months. She has no choice but to stay and rehab the cottage, but it also must meet the standards for preservation and guess who is in charge of determining what she can and can’t do — yes, it’s Sean, and he’s against just about everything she envisions from Celtic designs in floor tiles to the color of the paint on the walls. To say the two have a contentious relationship is putting it mildly, but the longer Rose stays in Dunclare, the more she beging to feel that perhaps this is where she’s meant to be.
During her stay she also meets and befriends a British woman, Sandy, who seems to pop up wherever Rose is, and Rose eventually learns the emotional reason why Sandy is in Dunclare for the holidays by herself. Rose also meets a young woman named Caitlin, who is renovating her own cottage and who has a major secret about her true identity. Rose also meets Sean’s mother Mary, who takes Rose under her wing and declares her family, and she’s also become attached to a sheep named Lambchop, who keeps getting out of his pen and zeroing in on Rose wherever she is. But as the time comes to complete the cottage and begin showing it to prospective buyers, and with a new property awaiting her in Scotland, Rose faces the toughest decision she’s ever had to make — does she do her usual thing and move on, putting all that she’s built in Dunclare behind her, or has she truly found her place and, possibly, her person in Sean?
Hallmark Channel
‘Tis the Season to Be Irish is a silly title for this particular movie because it makes it sound like a wacky rom-com. This is surprisingly a much more deeper and emotional film with the Christmas holiday infused into the story of Rose’s personal journey. The story succeeds or fails on the back of its star, Fiona Gubelmann. Rose can’t be a ruthless hosue flipper just moving from one place to the next, or the audience would not care about her journey. Gubelmann makes Rose focused on her job, but allows us to see deeper into her personality, her feeling of loss for her mother, her uncertainty about putting down her own roots, not wanting to lose herself or who she thinks she is by staying in one place (even though her friend keeps telling her she was meant to be in Dunclare). Gubelmann also shows us that Rose is a person who can still care deeply about others, even people she’s just met like Sandy. And over the course of the story, which isn’t clearly delineated — is it weeks or months? — Gubelmann naturally lets Rose’s guard down with Sean, making their budding romance feel more natural than rushed. If Gubelmann wasn’t able to convey all of Rose’s emotions and vulnerabilities, none of this would work, but she does and it makes the film all the more enjoyable.
Eoin Macken is also good a Sean, a man who has his roots firmly in Dunclare, the glue that holds the town together according to his mother. Not only is he the real estate agent and preservationist (and he may be giving Rose a harder time than some of the other buyers for personal reasons just to keep her in town longer than she needs to be), he also oversees the town’s holiday festival and market. Macken makes Sean a complicated man, obviously smitten with Rose long before she is with him, one that seems to have appointed himself the caretaker of Dunclare to the detriment of his own personal happiness. Not that he doesn’t love the town, but refusing to venture outside of its boundaries impacts his dating life because it’s a small town and everybody knows everybody else. The dating pool is pretty small so of course he is attracted to Rose, but he’s also terrified of losing her, seemingly unwilling to follow her if she decided to go to Scotland. Macken shows us all of the conflicting feelings Sean has through his wonderful performance, making us root for him to let down his walls and tell Rose how he feels.
Of the supporting characters, Tara Egan Langley has the most important side story as Sandy. At first it almost seems as if she’s some kind of magical character the way she just always seems to be wherever Rose is but it is a small town so it seems almost impossible not to keep running into each other. When Rose, and other non-local Caitlin (Flavia Watson), finally sit down with Rose and get her story of why she’s alone in Dunclare during the holidays, it’s the most heart-breaking part of the movie. She is there for a reason, and even with Rose’s and Caitlin’s help, she finds her task nearly impossible. You might need to have a couple of tissues handy for her part of the story. Watson also has an interesting story as to why she’s in Dunclare, but Sandy’s is the more important of the two. Rosemary Henderson is delightful as Mary, a warm, welcoming woman who is devoted to family and welcomes everyone into her home as family. She also can see that her son is struggling with his feelings and does what she can to help, even going so far as to agreeing to some home renovations courtesy of Rose (perhaps to keep her in town even longer so Sean can finally get up the nerve to make his move). And we can’t forget Baarbara the Sheep, simply adorable and a key player in the story’s climax. You can’t dislike a movie with a cute sheep in it.
Writers Joie Botkin and Samantha Herman, working from a story by Herman and Michael G. Larkin, have crafted a teleplay that is full of heart, deep emotion, humor, longing and love. Even though it’s set during the chilly holiday season, it is best described as warm and cozy thanks to the Irish setting and the wonderful performances from the cast. The town of Dunclare just feels real, the Irish version of those idealized American towns, but it’s someplace you’d definitely want to visit and perhaps even put down roots. ‘Tis the Season to Be Irish may not be the flashiest of Hallmark’s holiday movies, but it’s one of the most heartfelt with characters you can’t help but fall in love with. Definitely one of the better, and different, films of this Christmas season.
‘Tis the Season to Be Irish has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, and is rated TV-G. The film is streaming on Hallmark+.
Preview – ‘Tis the Season to Be Irish
Hallmark Channel
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