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    Netflix and Lifetime Christmas Movies Strip Down With ‘Hot Frosty’ and More

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    With “Hot Frosty,” “The Merry Gentlemen” and “A Carpenter Christmas Romance,” holiday fare is headed in a shirtless new direction.Fans of Christmas romance usually know exactly what to expect when tuning in to any of the dozens of new movies on cable and streaming platforms each year.For 90 minutes or so, they’ll see a city slicker return to her immaculately decorated small hometown for the holidays. A local guy will sweep her off her feet. The scenery will be snow-covered. The music will be merry. And a quick peck on the lips will reliably signify the lovers’ happy ending.This year, however, some holiday films are stripping down. Literally.“Hot Frosty” and “The Merry Gentlemen” on Netflix and “A Carpenter Christmas Romance” on Lifetime employ many of the usual tropes, but they’ve ditched the sweaters and fleeting embraces for steamier visuals. Here, in a move seemingly born of the realization that women are a key viewing demographic of the genre, the men are often shirtless and on display to be ogled by the female townsfolk. The kisses are passionate. And, in at least one instance, the lead characters have s-e-x.Judging by the moans and longing gazes, these fictional women have been deprived of carnal fulfillment during holidays past. Modern Christmas movie viewers have been left wanting, too.“Way back before Lifetime and Netflix, the old idea of a merry Christmas was filled with mistletoe, which invited transgressional romantic and sexual activity,” said Robert J. Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. He also noted the presence of sexual undertones in everything from Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” (a party scene where blindfolded revelers identify one another by touch) to songs like “Santa Baby” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”Chad Michael Murray, left, and Hector David Jr. are part of a male revue in “The Merry Gentlemen.”Katrina Marcinowski/NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Where Is Wendy Williams?’: 5 Takeaways From the Documentary

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      The Lifetime series gave an inside look at the television star’s life and struggles since she last hosted her talk show in 2021.Since 2021, daytime television viewers and pop culture fanatics alike have been wondering, where is Wendy Williams?Over the weekend, a Lifetime documentary series tried to answer that question.For a while, Williams’s struggles were seen on air on multiple occasions. On a 2017 Halloween episode of “The Wendy Williams Show,” she fainted during a live taping, which she later attributed to her diagnosis of Graves’s disease, an immune system disorder.In 2019, Williams announced on the show that she was staying in a sober living home, and then a month later, she filed for divorce from her husband. She last filmed her talk show on July 23, 2021, and the following year, when a court appointed a legal guardianship to oversee Williams’s finances, the state of her mental and physical health was unclear.It turns out that, until Williams entered a facility to treat her cognitive issues in 2023, cameras had been following her and documenting it all for a series on which Williams and her son, Kevin Hunter Jr., are listed as executive producers.Last week, as Lifetime prepared to air the resulting footage in “Where Is Wendy Williams?,” Williams’s guardian, whose identity is redacted throughout the documentary, requested a temporary restraining order to block the network from airing it — but a judge turned down the request, citing the First Amendment.At the same time, Williams’s care team revealed that the host, 59, had been diagnosed with progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, which affect language, communication behavior and cognitive function.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wendy Williams Has Frontotemporal Dementia and Aphasia, Representatives Say

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      Representatives for the former daytime talk show host announced her diagnoses two days before the release of a two-part documentary about her health issues.Wendy Williams, the former daytime talk show host, has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia, a disorder that makes it difficult or impossible for a person to express or comprehend language, according to a statement from her representatives.Ms. Williams, 59, who hosted “The Wendy Williams Show” on Fox for more than a decade, was officially diagnosed last year after “undergoing a battery of medical tests,” according to a statement released on Thursday.The tests show that Ms. Williams has primary progressive aphasia, a type of frontotemporal dementia, her representatives said, adding that she was receiving the necessary medical care.“Over the past few years, questions have been raised at times about Wendy’s ability to process information,” the statement said, “and many have speculated about Wendy’s condition, particularly when she began to lose words, act erratically at times, and have difficulty understanding financial transactions.”The statement was released before the premiere this Saturday of “Where Is Wendy Williams?” a Lifetime network two-part documentary about Ms. Williams.The project stopped filming in April, when, according to the documentary, Ms. Williams entered a care center where she has been ever since, People magazine reported on Wednesday. Ms. Williams’s son, Kevin Hunter Jr., says in the documentary that doctors have connected her cognitive issues to alcohol use, People reported. Ms. Williams’s family told People that a court-appointed legal guardian was the only person who had “unfettered” access to her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Just How Formulaic Are Hallmark and Lifetime Holiday Movies? We (Over)analyzed 424 of Them.

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      The Hallmark and Lifetime networks are known for their prolific output of made-for-television holiday movies each year. Even in the age of streaming, they bring in impressive cable television ratings, perhaps aided by how easy they are to leave on while, say, baking several batches of gingerbread for a tree lighting ceremony. They also have […] More

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      Hallmark Christmas Movies Are Falling for Europe

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      More and more of the cozy Christmas movies on Hallmark and Lifetime are set on the continent. But onscreen, it’s a Europe doused in holiday magic.Christmas is magical. Christmas is inescapable.And, according to an increasing number of holiday movies, it’s in Europe.Browse Hallmark and Lifetime’s channels, and you will find a Christmas in Rome. In Vienna. In Switzerland. In Scotland. In Notting Hill. We’re having a Belgian Chocolate Christmas. A jolly good Christmas. A merry Scottish Christmas and even a merry Swissmas. You can enjoy a Heidelberg holiday and a Joyeux Noel (that one’s in France).Europe, with its cobblestoned streets (a nightmare in heels), old buildings (no central heating) and Christmas markets (those can be as good as they look onscreen), provides the perfect setting for a magical holiday adventure.“Hallmark fans get to experience these incredible destinations through the eyes of our character,” said Ali Liebert, the director of one of the network’s 2023 offerings, “Christmas in Notting Hill.”In many of these films, an American girl is undervalued at her big city job. She leaves the city and finds a rugged local, who embodies all the wholesome values of a small town. Sometimes her love interest is a widower. Sometimes he has an adorable child, or he may have a dog. (If he lives in Scotland, the dog’s name may be Hamish.)In Netflix’s 2021 film “A Castle for Christmas,” a best-selling author (Brooke Shields) ends up in a Scottish village and falls for a local duke (Cary Elwes).Mark Mainz/NetflixCertain European spots have been deemed more appropriately Christmassy than others. (We’re yet to see “My Barcelona Christmas,” despite the December temperatures there being pretty similar to London.) In these films, Europe is awash with eligible princes from royal families presiding over countries with names like Aldovia or Cordinia, which you would be hard pressed to find on a map.And for those holiday movie fans expecting a white Christmas in England, it’s more likely you’ll get a drizzly one. The last time Britain saw a festive blanketing of snow for the holiday, the way Charles Dickens intended, was in 2010.But none of that matters. Christmas movies let you vicariously live your best European Christmas, which may be significantly better than the holidays experienced by actual Europeans.And as far as snow goes — there are visual effects for that.Hallmark is releasing 42 new holiday movies this year, with a catalog of many more, and shooting some in European locations “gives us more cultural traditions to dig into,” said Lisa Hamilton Daly, the head of programming at Hallmark Media. “Our audiences love to travel with us.”In “Christmas in Rome,” an American tour guide (Lacey Chabert) meets a business executive (Sam Page). Stefano Montesi/Crown Media United States LLCDaly is already looking ahead to next year’s Christmas, she said, adding that Hallmark crews will probably be returning to Europe for the network’s 2024 holiday movie slate.And for viewers, getting to Europe — whether it’s because of pandemic delays, high ticket prices or general travel stress during the holidays — has not gotten any easier.“U.S. audiences may not always be able to go to these exotic foreign lands,” said Dustin Rikert, the director of the new Hallmark film “A Merry Scottish Christmas,” which centers on estranged siblings in a castle in Scotland.American audiences seem to enjoy watching stories set in the beautiful Scottish countryside. In Netflix’s 2021 film “A Castle for Christmas,” a best-selling author (Brooke Shields) ends up in a Scottish village and falls in love with a local duke.In Lifetime’s 2020 film “Christmas at the Castle,” a big city girl is sent to the Scottish Highlands to find a rare fragrance. She, too, falls in love with a local.These stories and settings are pure escapism, according to David Lumsden and Toby Trueman, the director and an executive producer of “Christmas in Scotland,” a 2023 movie streaming on Plex and Xumo.Yes, “Merry Swissmas” is set in Switzerland.Lifetime“We never have white Christmases, it’s always a gray Christmas,” Trueman, who lives in Edinburgh, said. “This is not a realist film.”Lumsden has also directed other genres, including horror, and he has enjoyed the switch to holiday content. “My family rarely gets to see the stuff I do,” he said, because it’s “too scary for my niece or nephew.” Christmas movies, he added, can be watched by everyone.Movies set around the holidays have long been popular, and in the 2000s, festive romance films like “Love Actually” and “The Holiday” made big money at the box office, before joining films like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Home Alone” in the rotation of classic holiday movies.Over the past few years, Hallmark and Lifetime have bet big on cheesy, formulaic Christmas movies with a guaranteed happy ending, releasing dozens of new titles every year.These movies’ predictable and cozy nature fuels their popularity. “The formula exists for a very good reason,” Daly said. “It makes people happy.”In “Jolly Good Christmas,” a Christmas present brings Anji (Reshma Shetty) and David (Will Kemp) together in London.Rob Baker Ashton/Hallmark MediaAt the end of a Christmas movie, you know that the beautiful Scotsman (or Germanic prince or English soccer star) will end up with the ambitious American blonde (or brunette). They will kiss — and nothing else! Hands where I can see them! — at the exact moment soft snowflakes start falling.Our American heroine may even make a permanent move to that drafty old castle without modern amenities. But I digress. What happens after the credits roll is not important. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘True Lies’ and ‘Black Girl Missing’

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      An action series premieres on CBS, and a new film on Lifetime highlights how missing Black women are treated by the police and the media.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Feb. 27-March 5. Details and times are subject to change.MondayAlhajji Sharif, a former prisoner, in “Attica.”SHOWTIMEATTICA (2021) 5:45 p.m. on SHO2. This Oscar-nominated documentary from the director Stanley Nelson explores the enduring violence and racism of the prison system, and the ongoing need for reform, through the lens of the Attica prison revolt of 1971. Using archival footage and interviews with survivors of the uprising, reporters and government officials, the documentary takes the viewer through the events as they unfolded, building to “a powerful final half-hour that makes the case that the brutality used in ending the riot was excessive, criminal and racist — a show of force closer to revenge,” as Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review.TuesdayClockwise from left, Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton in “Apollo 13.”Ron Batzdorff/Universal StudiosAPOLLO 13 (1995) 7:55 p.m. on Syfy. Adapted from the 1994 book “Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13” by Jim Lovell, the astronaut who commanded the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, and Jeffrey Kluger, this Academy Award-winning film follows Lovell (Tom Hanks), Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and what happened during their failed Moon landing mission. In a 1995 article about the film for The Times, John Noble Wilford, the science journalist who covered “the ill-starred flight” in 1970, attests to the film’s authenticity. The story “evokes a time when people took risks to reach grand goals,” Wilford wrote, adding that “perhaps the retelling of the Apollo 13 story will remind Americans of who we were and who we want to think we are.”WednesdaySURVIVOR 8 p.m. on CBS. This Emmy Award-winning competitive reality television series returns for its 44th season. Hosted by Jeff Probst, the season premiere introduces the 18 contestants who will compete in a series of games and challenges until only one person remains to claim the show’s $1 million prize.TRUE LIES 10 p.m. on CBS. Inspired by the James Cameron action film of the same name, this new series follows the suburban Tasker family as Helen (Ginger Gonzaga), a language professor, finds out that her husband, Harry (Steve Howey), is a spy for Omega Sector, a U.S. intelligence agency. The show follows the couple as Helen is recruited by Omega and the pair begin working together, all while keeping their double lives a secret from their children.ThursdayBREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961) 8 p.m. on TCM. This Grammy and Academy Award-winning romantic comedy, adapted from Truman Capote’s 1958 novella of the same name, follows Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), a country girl turned socialite, as she falls in love with Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a struggling writer in the same apartment building. “It is a completely unbelievable but wholly captivating flight into fancy composed of unequal dollops of comedy, romance, poignancy, funny colloquialisms and Manhattan’s swankiest East Side areas captured in the loveliest of colors,” A.H. Weiler wrote in a 1961 review for The Times.FridayThe poet Ruth Stone’s work explored the nature of creativity, grief and family dynamics.Ruth Stone TrustRUTH STONE’S VAST LIBRARY OF THE FEMALE MIND (2021) 9 p.m. on PBS WORLD. The poet Ruth Stone’s work explored the nature of creativity, grief and family dynamics; she died in 2011 at 96, and wrote for much of her life in obscurity. Through interviews with Stone at different points in her life, interviews with her family and colleagues, readings of her poetry and an animation by her granddaughter, this documentary, premiering on PBS for Women’s History Month, is an intimate look at Stone’s legacy and art.SaturdayBLACK GIRL MISSING (2023) 8 p.m. on Lifetime. A part of Lifetime’s Emmy Award-winning public affairs campaign, “Stop Violence Against Women,” the movie “Black Girl Missing” highlights how missing Black women are handled by the police and the media. The film follows Cheryl (Garcelle Beauvais) as she tries to find her daughter, who has been labeled a runaway while the police and the media are too busy following another missing person: a white girl. The movie is accompanied by “Beyond the Headlines: Black Girl Missing,” which tells the true stories of missing women of color through interviews with their families.SundayFrom left, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, Kandi Burruss, LaTocha Scott and Tamika Scott, members of Xscape, in “SWV & XSCAPE: The Queens of R&B.”Phylicia J.L. Munn/BravoSWV & XSCAPE: THE QUEENS OF R&B 9:30 p.m. on Bravo. Two of the best-selling ’90s R&B girl groups are brought together for a one-night-only concert event in this six-part limited series. Viewers will follow the Grammy Award-nominated, multiplatinum trio SWV and the quartet Xscape as they explore the dynamics of sisterhood in music groups on and off the stage. Each episode will capture the highs and lows of these seven women’s journeys as they work together — and against one another — to put on a massive concert. More