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Hallmark has recently developed a number of mysteries in which the protagonist is the female owner of a small shop of some kind. These are the Garage Sale Mysteries (5), Murder She Baked (3), Aurora Teagarden (1), and the related Gourmet Detective Mysteries (2). These last two don't quite fit the category, as the protagonist is a cop, not a shop owner, but they are my favorites of the lot, which is probably why I find it so necessary to include them.

The latest addition is A Flower Shop Mystery: Mum's the Word. It is worse than all the eleven movies listed above.

The problem with the movie is not lack of star power. It has bigger names than any of the other 11. Brooke Shields is still appealing at 50, and Brennan Elliot does a decent job. Kate Drummond is sparkling. It's too bad they didn't give her more to do. Beau Bridges, looking better than in several recent appearances, clearly demonstrates that he is the real professional in the cast. But he has an extremely small part. I'd be surprised if he had more than 2 minutes total on-screen time.

It seems that they spent all their budget getting these big names, and a Mercedes for Abby to drive, and had nothing left to hire a screenwriter.

The only reason I give the writing a 2 instead of a zero is that it contains some good puns, a rarity these days, and not present in the other series. But the dialog itself is atrocious: choppy, unrealistic, awkward and poor at conveying the story. (SORRY, THE QUOTES BELOW HAVE BEEN SEVERELY COMPROMISED BY IMDb'S AUTOMATIC FORMATTING.)

It contains such illiteracies as: "re-open up your store."

"His death was very hard on her, and it was for me too."

"I can promise you one thing. Regarding the date. And it will be a date." "Thank you."

And finally, along these lines, "You know what they say, join the Army and see the world." Of course, it should be "Navy."

It contains such discontinuities as "He asked me for money," when Elvis Jones did not do so -- She spontaneously gave him ten whole dollars.

"Did you know they ID'ed the victim?" "(smugly satisfied) Uh-huh. Did you know his name?" "Billy Ryan." "(shocked) What?? When did this happen?" "I won that round, didn't I?"

The dialog is very repetitive.

"Who's that tank commander?" "What?" "Who's that tank commander?" "Oh, that's Sergeant Major Marco Salvare, 75th Army Ranger Unit." "Wow! When? Where?"

And my favorite: "Oh! There's a car!" "Car?" "There's a car!"

A moment later, "What do you see?" "It's an Escalade." "I know it's an Escalade. Who's driving?" "It's Tony Vertucci in the Escalade."

The flow of scenes leaves much to be desired. It's like Goldstein said, "Oh, let's have a scene in the flower shop, and then we can have one in the bar, and then one at her father's house, and then one at the nursery, and then another one at the flower shop, and then another one at the bar, and then one where Marco runs into Abby when she's jogging," without there being any reason or plot requirement to do so. I often found myself apathetic to where they were at the moment and what they were doing (mostly eating).

Many scenes end lamely. Abby comes home to find a wilted, dried-out bouquet on her doorstep. She looks for a note, but there is none. Break to commercial. Bouquet never mentioned again.

"Look, I got a bar to run, so just... good night." "Bye."

"Have a good day, Abby." "Mm-hmm." Break to commercial.

The story is full of idiotic elements. Abby says, "I told my insurance agent to file a claim against Vertucci," which he apparently did, even though she has no evidence, nothing more than a hunch that he was the one who hit her Mercedes and ran.

All the harassment Abby suffers at the hands of a corrupt cop and county commissioner is very prosaic. Little is made of any of it, she mostly ignores it, and there is no tension or suspense whatever associated with it. It is finally all explained away in a couple of sentences in the next-to-last scene.

In that same scene, Abby's DA ex-boyfriend tells her, concerning Elvis Jones's murder, "But, believe me, this part of the investigation is just beginning."

And in an ironic flouting of modern nutritional knowledge: "I've got meatball parm. Four stars on Yelp. We can eat healthy."

The story is not particularly imaginative, which is the flaw of all the 12 movies I speak of here. Their charm results more from the characters and their interaction than from originality of plot. The best along these lines is the Gourmet Detective series, with the banter between Brooke Burns and Dylan Neal a constant delight. The Aurora Teagarden, Murder, She Baked and Garage Sale series also have some good moments.

But the banter in Mum's the Word between Abby and Marco generally falls flat. It is composed of things nobody would ever say, in an order they would never say them, and for most part comes off as just lame. Brooke does what she can to make her character an indomitable force that can't be turned aside, but is severely hampered by the asinine things she has to say.

"You like to meddle, don't you?" "OK, first of all, I hate that word, and... where do we go from here?"

"Think about how happy it makes people." "Is it making you happy?" "Yeah, as a matter of fact, it is." "Good."

There is another Flower Shop Mystery in post-production right now, and one beyond that in the works. Let's hope somebody tossed Hallmark a clue, and that they will be better than this turkey.

I mean "inspiring" in the most non-religious sense of the word. I have followed the Postables with enjoyment since their first movie. (I didn't know about the earlier weekly series until just now.) One of the things I like about them is that, with the exception of the first, they don't beat you over the head with religion, and are more about the budding relationships between Oliver (Eric Mabius) and Shane (Kristin Booth), and Norman (Geoff Gustafson) and Rita (Crystal Lowe), the enormously talented pair who supply most of the comedy in the series. Rita's last name is Haywith -- with an "I," as she points out when the Chairwoman (Karin Konoval) addresses her as Rita Hayworth. Norman's last name is Dorman.

In this episode they are joined by Mark Valley, who is excellent as always, playing Steve, Shane's ex-boyfriend who is a spy for some TLA. Oliver's jealousy at their interaction, especially when he catches them kissing, battling with his confidence in Shane's loyalty to him, are fun to watch. It also cracks me up that he continues to address her as "Miss McInerney," in spite of all they have been through together. An even higher point is the delivery of Norman's gift to Rita, which is hilarious, sad, and endearing all at the same time.

This episode rises a head and shoulders above all the previous ones, though, in its involvement of the viewer, touching themes that we all must face every day. We are challenged to "pay attention to the little things right in front of us, or they may soon be gone." We are forced to look inside ourselves to find the courage to achieve our destiny. No matter how dark and hopeless things seem to be, we are advised to "hold on tight." And most importantly, to remember that although the world is full of ugliness and pain, if we come across something that is simple and joyous and beautiful, that thing is worth fighting to preserve.

I have watched just about every show on the history of the Bible and the Gnostic Gospels that has been on TV. There have been several good ones on the History channel and Nat Geo.

Bible Hunters is the best one I've seen.

Most of the other programs focus on the Nag Hammadi documents, commonly called the Gnostic Gospels, or the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Judas.

This show has all kinds of stuff in it I didn't know. It goes much farther back, beginning with the English baron Robert Curzon, who was the first to discover gospels that did not appear in the Bible in 1837, thus putting the sword to the belief common in the day in England and America that the Bible was the unchanging, revealed Word of God. The controversy this created, and its continuation due to the discoveries that it further chronicles, is the binding theme of the program.

The program then moves to Constantin von Tischendorf, who discovered the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest version of the complete Bible, at St. Catherine's Monstery, at the foot of Mount Sinai, in 1844. This showed that the Bible as we know it had been tampered with.

We then go to an ancient midden (garbage dump) at Oxyrhynchus that yielded thousands of manuscripts, including many lost gospels.

The quirkiest characters are the Smith sisters, twin Scottish Presbyterian spinsters who made it to St. Catherine's with an entourage, silver place settings and a tea kettle. They became the first women ever to enter the monastery. There they discovered a palimpsest, a manuscript written over an older one on the same pages of parchment, that contained the four canonical Gospels.

The show finally gets to the 1945 Nag Hamadi discovery towards the end of Part 2. I would have liked there to have been a little more on this, but I'm not sure what I would have cut out to make room for it, the rest of the show is so good. My one criticism of the content is that it says the Gospel of Mary was part of the Nag Hammadi documents. While it was published in the book "The Nag Hammadi Library," it was actually discovered before 1900 as part of the Berlin Codex.

The show is in two parts, each an hour long. The host, Jeff Rose, takes us on a journey similar to the way Josh Bernstein used to do on "Digging for the Truth" (2005) on the History Channel. Jeff visits the sites where some of the oldest Bibles were found. There is wonderful footage of the monasteries of Deir el-Surian and St. Catherine's. I particularly liked the shots of the interior of the library of St. Catherine's, which I have not seen before. There is also a short interview with Father Justin of El Paso, TX, the first non-Greek to join the monastery in its 1500 year history.

The high-quality video footage of all these sites, along with the Sphinx and the pyramids, is half the fun. There is also an amusing scene where Jeff tries to rent a camel to go to St. Catherine's with the help of some native children.

I highly recommend this show for anyone interested in Bible and Gnostic Gospel history. It was first shown on BBC-2, and is now being shown on the Smithsonian Channel.