Why There Won’t Be a ‘When Calls the Heart’ Christmas Special in 2023
Hallmark Channel has yet to reveal its 2023 Countdown to Christmas lineup. But we do know that the annual holiday programming extravaganza won’t include a When Calls the Heart Christmas special. While Christmas-centric episodes of the feel-good network’s flagship drama have aired in the past, fans won’t see one this year, executive producer Brian Bird recently shared.
The last ‘When Calls the Heart’ Christmas special aired in 2019
Five When Calls the Heart holiday specials aired between 2015 and 2019. The movie-length episodes were beloved by fans and often featured big moments for the show’s chracters. For example, 2018’s The Greatest Christmas Blessing saw the recently widowed Elizabeth (Erin Krakow) give birth to her son Jack. The 2019 special, Home for Christmas, also served as a backdoor pilot for the spinoff series When Hope Calls.
But since 2019, When Calls the Heart has been conspicuously absent from Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas schedule. And unfortunately, fans won’t see a WCTH Christmas special in 2023, Bird revealed in a recent chat with Heart to Hearties (via YouTube). That’s both a creative decision and a business decision, he said.
The challenge of making ‘When Calls the Heart’ Christmas specials
“Everybody loves good Christmas movies,” Bird acknowledged. But When Calls the Heart Christmas movies present some “creative challenges,” he explained.
For one, a holiday episode needs to stand apart from the rest of the show’s season from a storytelling perspective.
“When we do 12 episodes of the show, they’re very much continuing, serialized drama, serialized storytelling that all connect to each other,” Bird said. But a Christmas episode is “disconnected from the chronology of what’s been happening in Hope Valley.” That makes it more difficult to come up with a storyline that works for the show.
On the business side, there’s another challenge. Most of Hallmark’s holiday programming consists of standalone movies.
“They’re one-off stories; they’re one-off worlds. They’re not connected to any other creative streams,” Bird said.
For the network, there’s a big advantage to making a movie that’s not connected to a larger, ongoing story.
“They can air anytime,” Bird said. “You can air them out of order. When they’re running Christmas in July they can rerun a bunch of those things. And then to throw a When Calls the Heart Christmas special into that mix is kind of odd from a business standpoint.”
Not doing a holiday episode means a longer season for the Hallmark series
Though more Christmas specials probably aren’t in When Calls the Heart’s future, it’s not all bad news. Not doing a holiday episode means that the show can air more episodes during the regular season. Starting with season 8, seasons expanded from 10 to 12 episodes.
“If we were to do a Christmas episode, it would cut that to 10,” Bird pointed out. “Because our order is really for 12 hours of content each year. So those are some of the more practical, business reasons for it”
New episodes of When Calls the Heart Season 10 air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel. All of the When Calls the Heart holiday specials are available to stream on Hallmark Movies Now.
For more on the entertainment world and exclusive interviews, subscribe to Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s YouTube channel.
