The Hallmark Channel is known for romantic Christmas movies, and their film The Holiday Sitter will feature their first central same-sex couple. Hallmark has been releasing yearly Christmas movies since 2000, and each of their films tends to revolve around two people falling in love over the holidays. Yet, despite releasing over 150 movies, The Holiday Sitter will be their first to feature LGBTQ+ stars.
The film, which stars Jonathan Bennett and George Krissa, will feature a couple coming together after Bennett's character is left to watch over his nephew and niece. As Bennett told Deadline, the film is everything that should be expected from Hallmark Christmas movies. The only change is who happens to fall in love.
“We’re doing all the classic things that we love in Hallmark movies. We’re doing the tropes that we’ve come to love and expect from watching Hallmark movies. We’re just turning up the comedy and having two men as the leads instead of the classic straight couple. The audience is going to see two men meet and fall for each other in the exact same way that a man and a woman meet and fall for each other. That’s literally the only difference with The Holiday Sitter. It’s based in love.”
The Holiday Sitter will release on December 11 on the Hallmark Channel along with every other Hallmark Christmas movie as a part of the channel's standard "Countdown to Christmas" schedule. While the TV movie will be a major step for Hallmark, it won't be much of a departure from the standard fare of holiday joy and a workaholic finding love in a surprising place. It will simply add diversity to the channel.
How Hallmark Christmas Movies Have Grown Increasingly Diverse
Of course, The Holiday Sitter isn't the only milestone that Hallmark has crossed. Where once it only featured straight white couples, the movies have begun featuring couples from diverse populations. Now featuring actors like Holly Robinson Peete, a Black woman who has starred in multiple Hallmark movies like The Christmas Doctor, the channel has also begun starring Asian families in movies like A Big Fat Family Christmas. LGBTQ+ representation is important in media, and Hallmark has worked to become a channel that includes diversity in its films, a small but important step in representation.
Yet it is easy to see where Hallmark's efforts may not have taken them far enough. After 22 years of movies, it is shocking that they have only produced a single film featuring a same-sex couple and only featured its first Asian couple in 2020. While Hallmark has come a long way, it still has a ways to go before it achieves actual equality in its films. With films like Bros serving as more than just LGBTQ+ rom-coms by providing inspiration to people everywhere, representation is clearly something that can make a movie even more impactful than it might otherwise be. Hallmark has the opportunity to become a leading face in the fight to feature diverse communities in what could normally be typical Christmas movies. The Holiday Sitter is a great start, but there is still much more work to be done.
Source: Deadline
