Love, status and the Hallmark formula
Reduced circumstances inspire the Dashwood sisters to approach love from different directions in the 2024 adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” (8 p.m. Saturday, Hallmark, TV-G). For those keeping score, the Hallmark Channel, long associated with greeting cards and Valentine’s Day gifts and chocolates, has rebranded this February as “Jane-uary.”
Frankly, it’s ex-Austen! Nobody watches Hallmark movies for originality. They’re the ultimate comfort food, predictable and repeatable. But it’s interesting to see how they’ve moved ever so slightly from their familiar approach.
For some time, every Hallmark film has involved an overconfident female professional who only discovers happiness (and love, naturally) when she retreats to her bucolic hometown and finds herself either in the arms of a widowed high school beau, a hunky farmer or some other down-home fella.
In short, Hallmark heroines tend to trade the illusion of status to take a chance on love. Raised in the meritocratic atmosphere of getting good grades and climbing the corporate ladder, they appear to have insulated themselves from their own feelings.
Austen characters, in contrast, tend to be smart, accomplished and wellraised, but come from families fraught with financial insecurity. In “Pride and Prejudice,” Elizabeth Bennett’s eventual ability to find the right man (Mr. Darcy) is all the more enjoyable due to the fact that she seemed initially fated to marry the obsequious Mr. Collins just to keep her family from homelessness and ruin.
Hallmark is hardly alone in its Austen obsession, a trend that’s been with us for a solid generation at least. It’s been nearly 30 years since Colin Firth played Mr. Darcy in the popular 1995 adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice,” broadcast on A&E in the U.S., in the same year that “Clueless,” director Amy Heckerling’s adaptation of “Emma,” starring Alicia Silverstone, hit the big screen.
Traditional Hallmark movies about busy professionals finding love in spite of themselves may have offered years of escapist candy, but Austen’s 19thcentury tales of finding love while barely escaping poverty appear to speak to contemporary viewers and 21st-century concerns.
› Have you missed watching characters bludgeon the brains of shuffling zombies? The wait is over, as “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live” (9 p.m. Sunday, AMC, TV-MA) debuts, with new faces and familiar characters trying to make sense of a grim new reality.
There was a time not all that long ago when “The Walking Dead” franchise was the most-watched series on television. But at some point, the story became a tad too familiar, and viewers began to drift away. For a rather spirited conversation among those who actually care, Google “When did you stop watching ‘The Walking Dead’?”
Of course, the same could be said, or asked, of “American Idol” (8 p.m. Sunday, ABC, TV-PG).
› While we’re on the subject of changing TV tastes, habits and ways of watching, look for the 30th Annual Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards to stream exclusively on Netflix on Saturday night at 8 p.m. This marks the first SAG Awards since the actors union returned from the picket line. Among the reasons for the strike were the business practices of streamers like Netflix.
Among the highlights of the evening is the presentation, by Jennifer Aniston, of a Life Achievement award to singer, actor and director Barbra Streisand. Among the highlights of Streisand’s six-decade career is her Oscar-winning turn in the 1968 movie adaptation of “Funny Girl” (10 p.m. Saturday, TCM, TV-PG), a Broadway musical profile of vaudeville star Fanny Brice, a role that helped turn Streisand from a cabaret sensation to a major recording artist.