17 Best Hallmark Movies of 2024, Ranked
There is nothing like getting cozy on the couch and curling up with a good Hallmark movie. All year long, the Crown Media Network provides us with funny adventures, swoony rom-coms, and heartfelt drama. No matter the season, Hallmark will have a movie for you and the family to enjoy.
As 2024 and another Countdown to Christmas celebration comes to a close, we’re looking at the best movies Hallmark had to offer this year, from highly-anticipated sequels to already beloved films to new classics we will be adding into an annual rewatch rotation. There’s truly something here for everyone.
Check out which movies made our list of the best Hallmark movies of 2024, and let us know what’s on your list in the comments.
Season’s Greetings From Cherry Lane
Christmas on Cherry Lane was such a delightful treat last year, and Hallmark doubled down with three new installments from the storied house at the center of the movie. Season’s Greetings was best of the three (but all of them hold a special place in our hearts). This movie brings Virgin River alum Sarah Dugdale into the fold in a new timeline and also reunites the audience with Vincent Rodriguez III‘s Zian and Jonathan Bennett‘s Mike. We love this tradition that Hallmark has started with Cherry Lane and hope it continues.
A Greek Recipe for Romance
A recurring theme throughout this list is going to be escapism. (Please look around at the outside world. You get it.) Nothing really encapsulated that theme as much as Hallmark’s Passport to Love programming event in June. Almost all of those movies made our top 10, including A Greek Recipe for Romance, which follows Abby (Danielle C. Ryan), a young woman who flees to Greece to visit her mom after a professional and personal setback. Enter Theo (Rafael Kariotakis), a charming restauranteur who provides the perfect distraction from everything that went wrong back home. When their restaurant leads to a deeper connection and love, Abby has to decide if she’s really willing to give up everything back home. Meanwhile, we say pass the tzatziki and another helping of this enchanting romance.
Sugarplummed
Romantic love isn’t the only type of love celebrated in Hallmark movies, and Sugarplummed is a great example of that. Emily (Maggie Lawson) wants a picture-perfect Christmas and is stunned when her favorite Christmas movie character, Sugarplum (Janel Parrish), shows up to make it happen. Of course, Emily learns that picture-perfect isn’t actually perfect, but the journey to get there is heartwarming and Parrish wears the fairy godmother role very well.
One Bad Apple: A Hannah Swensen Mystery
We love a mystery with a side of delicious baked goods! Hannah Swensen returned this spring with a new mystery, and a new potential love interest. Hannah Swensen star Alison Sweeney reunited with her Days of Our Lives costar Victor Webster in One Bad Apple as Hannah’s ex, Mike (Cameron Mathison), went out of town on a special mission for the FBI and Chad took his place. We love how Hannah uses her keen intellect to solve mysteries while running her bakery and evading her mother Delores’ (Barbara Niven) attempts to get her down the aisle. Logically, we know that Mike had to leave because Mathison has moved over to Hallmark competitor Great American Family, but we’re still not sure how we feel about Hannah and Chad’s romantic future yet either.
CrimeTime: Freefall
Luke Macfarlane cemented himself as a top-tier Hallmark star in last December’s Catch Me If You Claus, and he continued to endear us to him with this spring’s delightful CrimeTime: Freefall. The meta rom-com follows crime series actress Hadley Warner (Lyndie Greenwood) as she retires to a small town, only to end up embroiled in her first real case. Macfarlane plays Detective Shawn Caden, who is trying to keep Warner from ruining his investigation as she uses her TV detective skills to try and solve his case. Shawn and Hadley are oil and water at first, but it’s so fun to watch them work off one another, and we hope to see sparks continue to fly between these two in more crime adventures.
Two Scoops of Italy
There’s nothing like a scoop of gelato during the hottest days of summer. A scoop of gelato is just what Two Scoops of Italy feels like. The movie was part of Hallmark’s Passport to Love series in June and took us to the boot country to discover flavors, culture, and Italian chivalry with Danielle (Hunter King). The young chef gets full on pasta and falls in love with the country and the charming Giancarlo (Michele Rosiello), delivering a tasty romance that makes us feel a lot more glamorous than facing the unbearable heat outside.
A Very Vermont Christmas
A Very Vermont Christmas premiered on July 20, but it really scratched that summer mistletoe when it seemed like forever before we’d be in cozy sweaters, singing carols, and drinking hot chocolate. Of course, A Very Vermont Christmas is about a very different drink — a yuletide microbrew that forces antagonists Joy (Katie Leclerc) and Zac (Ryan McPartlin) to team up to save Joy’s family business.
Blind Date Book Club
Raise your hand if the ultimate dream is to leave your current job and run an independent bookstore in a quaint little town. That’s all of us, it seems. Blind Date Book Club takes that fantasy to the next level when Meg Tompkins (Erin Krakow) falls in love with the author of her bookstore book club’s latest “blind date” read. iZombie favorite Robert Buckley plays the author in question, Graham Sterling. We recommend adding this to your viewing list if you’re currently in a book slump. It’s not the same as a great new book, but it’s pretty darn close.
Savoring Paris
Bethany Joy Lenz leads us on this vision-board-worthy tour of Paris in this super-fun rom-com about a food chain executive that sojourns to the city of love after she’s burned out at her day job. Her adventures along the Seine lead her to a love triangle with a food critic (Ben Wiggins) and a “rugged cheesemonger” (Stanley Weber), who both show Ella how to open up and embrace the untrodden path. We are obsessed with Hallmark’s destination films, and Savoring Paris not only showed us the landmark sights, but also delivered high fashion we’d commit crimes to put in our closet. This movie is the ultimate escape fantasy.
The Santa Class
There’s nothing like a Santa-centric movie to really put you in the holiday spirit. Hallmark got creative with The Santa Class in which Kate (Kimberley Sustad), the owner of a struggling Santa School, and her instructor, Dan (Benjamin Ayres), must help an amnesiac Santa (Trevor Lerner) get his memories back to save Christmas. This is another wild adventure Christmas movie that will have you laughing out loud at multiple points. Also, how does one exactly get into Santa School? Asking for a friend…
Haunted Wedding
Dear Hallmark, we need Dominic Sherwood doing Scottish cosplay in as many movies as possible, please, and thank you. Jane (Janel Parrish) and Brian (Sherwood) are amateur ghost hunters who discover their idyllic country wedding is being haunted by Brian’s Revolutionary War-era ancestors and chaos erupts. Sometimes, you can feel the amount of fun the cast and crew had making a movie radiate through the screen, and that’s the case with Haunted Wedding. We had so much fun watching this movie that we’d like to see every special event in Jane and Brian’s relationship have a fun ghostly twist.
Shifting Gears
Could we really have a Hallmark movie ranking without a Tyler Hynes appearance? Of course not, and this appearance comes with a smoking-hot leather jacket. This second-chance romance co-starring Katherine Barrell stole our hearts in March. Hynes and Barrell have incredible chemistry, and we loved watching them banter over their car restoration skills. Who doesn’t love a little romance paired with some fierce competition? This movie definitely started our engines.
Santa Tell Me
Christmas love triangles are so passé. Santa Tell Me ups the ante with a love pentagon. Interior designer Olivia (Erin Krakow) finds a letter from Santa telling her that she’ll find the love of her life by Christmas Eve and his name will be Nick. That’s so helpful, Santa! Unfortunately, Olivia meets three guys named Nick in short succession. She’s also feeling the spark with her co-worker, Chris (Daniel Lissing), giving her four guys to juggle while also trying to finish her Christmas shopping! It’s a wild, romantic ride, but definitely a highlight of the Countdown to Christmas festivities. Plus, we all loved that When Calls the Heart reunion.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: A Tale of Three Letters
The POstables returned with another mail adventure in the latest film in the Signed, Sealed, Delivered franchise. In the latest caper, the POstables searched for the recipients of three new dead letters, which led to surprisingly emotional impacts for our civil servants. A Tale of Three Letters emphasizes Hallmark’s notion that romantic love isn’t the only love worth celebrating in their films. There’s still romance here, but there’s also friendship and family, which make you feel just as cozy as the network’s signature lovey-dovey movies.
Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story
There are a few Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce-inspired Christmas movies out there this year, but make no mistake, Holiday Touchdown is the best one. Not only does it star one of our absolute faves, Tyler Hynes, but Hallmark teamed up with the official Kansas City Chiefs organization, so it’s the only movie that also features coach Andy Reid, guard Trey Smith, and Donna Kelce! Cameos aside, Hines and Hunter King bring that special Hallmark Christmas spirit to the football field, and the movie is a genuine fun time to watch, even without the Tayvis connection.
Three Wiser Men and a Boy
Can anyone get enough of the Three Wise Men series? This year treated us to a new installment, and it’s just as funny and heartwarming as its prequels. We jump five years in the new movie to when Thomas is in first grade, and the Brenner brothers must band together to put on a Christmas pageant for him. Thomas has grown up, but the Brenner brothers are still largely the same and that’s what keeps us coming back for every movie.
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice gets a lot of the Jane Austen love out there, but Hallmark’s 2024 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility reminded us why it is also an underrated classic. The scope of this movie alone elevated Hallmark to new heights, but the charming performances from Deborah Ayorinde, Bethany Antonia, and Dan Jeannotte made this an instant classic Hallmark film. It is swoony and gorgeous to look at and a real accomplishment for the Crown Media brand. This will be worth revisiting for multiple Valentine’s Days to come.