Murder, She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery

I was so excited to watch the movie after reading the entire series of the Hannah Swensen series. Whoever directed this paid little to no attention to the actual characters, details, and vision of the books. Hannah's hair is supposed to be red and short, her mother is supposed to have short hair, in a few of the movies you never see her youngest sister Michelle, her cat Moishe is supposed to be a big furry red haired cat. There's many more details I could list, it's so disappointing to see the movie and it does the book 0 justice. Please pay attention to the actual books. Joanne Fluke is a great author, her books deserve a better movie that actually highlight her characters.

"Murder, She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery" is part of a series of movies starring Allison Sweeney and Cameron Mathison. If you're a soap fan you're very familiar with both of them.

People tend to look down on soap actors. They forget that as actors, they have to be able to cry on cue and express real emotion, memorize as many as 60 pages of dialogue in a day, and one other thing as well -- they have to make their unbelievable story lines believable. And they succeed.

In Eden Lake, Minnesota, it's a week before Christmas, and Hannah Swensen (Sweeney) who owns Hannah's Cookie Jar is very busy indeed filling orders. At this point she has two men after her, Mike (Mathison) a police officer, and Norman, a dentist. Her mother Delores (Barbara Niven) likes Norman. Her sister Andrea (Lisa Durupt) likes Mike.

That's one feature of Hannah's life; the other is that she keeps finding dead bodies. This time it's one of her own customers, Larry Jaeger, who co-owned the Crazy Elf Christmas tree lot with Courtney Miller (Farah Fath, another soap actress), his fiancée.

Mike hates that Hannah becomes involved in these cases; she gets in the way of his own investigation.

The major suspect is a friend of Hannah's mother, Nancy Schmidt (Ona Grauer), better known as "Dr. Love" on the radio. She is still married to Larry, but she hasn't seen him in years, since he stole all her money and disappeared. Larry was collecting money from the Christmas tree store but his fiancé was doing all the work.

It turns out that Larry has a few enemies, so Dr. Love is just one. And Hannah may be in danger as she gets too close to the truth.

I guessed I missed something during this - I mean, how big is this town that Dr. Love never ran into Larry? He's obviously in town because he was killed there.

Plot hole or no plot hole, this episode has a nice atmosphere, and the acting is fine. Kristoffer Tabori does a good job of directing as he keeps the action moving. The romance is nice, too, with Sweeney and Mathison having good chemistry.

As an aside, Cameron Mathison is one of the sweetest people in the world. If you tell him your friend so and so met him in Chicago, he'll say, right - she came with her mother, right? He's amazing that way. It's always nice to see him.

One of the problems with most of these amateur detective series is that they always make it seem like the police are doing practically nothing. Actually this series is better than most in that regard. Mike is often ahead of Hannah. But sometimes not.

In this episode (if you will), Hannah discovers what appears to be a key clue which Mike acknowledges is helpful. If that's true, Mike is a poor detective. One of the first things modern detectives do is canvas for that particular clue.

Other than that, this is still a decent story. There is some romance too, in the form of a potential love triangle. The characters are appealing, especially Alison Sweeney as Hannah. While none of these actors will win an Oscar or Emmy, the acting is good enough to enjoy the story.

We watched this out of desperation during COVID-19 lockdown! What a dreary offering! All the characters were equally annoying in their roles! The actress playing the mother was particularly painful! Inane lines, silly situations, nothing really seemed worth caring about! Very disappointed we gave it our attention.

Love this series and was not surprised that it was nominated for an Emmy award at some point. Hannah is so real as is the whole cast. Hope to see a lot more new programs this year. I like that Hannah can't make up her mind if she should keep trying with Mike or give up. I loved the Valentines show where Hannah chooses to spend the holiday with her mother and sister rather then spend it with Mike or Norman.