Heavy Hallmark will premiere a new medical mystery in May 2024.
Though actors Brendan Penny and Amanda Schull have been Hallmark Channel regulars for years, neither has had a starring role in a Hallmark mystery franchise — until now.
No official announcement has been made, but the newly-rebranded Hallmark Mystery quietly posted details online in early April 2024 about a brand new medical mystery starring the two actors. “Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home” is slated to premiere on May 17. It’s one of multiple new mysteries in the works at Hallmark.
Here’s what you need to know:
Amanda Schull Will Play Army Surgeon in New Hallmark Mystery
Heavy/GettyBrendan Penny, Amanda Schull
According to the synopsis posted by Hallmark Mystery, “Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home,” Schull will play a former Army surgeon who “moves back to her hometown and joins a practice of family doctors, but when she’s drawn into solving the mysterious death of a patient, her quiet life becomes upended.”
The synopsis doesn’t specify Penny’s role, but it’s common in Hallmark mysteries for the male counterpart to play a detective, attorney or law enforcement official working on the crime.
Though Penny had small roles in 2014’s “Along Came a Nanny” and 2015’s “Gourmet Detective: A Healthy Place to Die,” according to IMDb, he has not starred in a Hallmark mystery during his last decade with the network.
Penny’s first starring role on Hallmark was in 2015’s “Tis the Season for Love” opposite Sarah Lancaster. He has starred in over a dozen Hallmark movies, per IMDb, and was a beloved member of the “Chesapeake Shores” cast, playing Kevin O’Brien on the series from 2016 to 2022. His most recent Hallmark Channel projects were the 2023 holiday movie “A Season for Family” and “The Wedding Cottage” with Erin Krakow.
Schull, meanwhile, is best known for playing Katrina Bennett on “Suits” from 2013 to 2019 and on the SyFy series “12 Monkeys” from 2015 to 2018, according to IMDb. Her first Hallmark Channel project was 2018’s “Love, Once and Always” opposite Peter Porte. While juggling other projects, Schull has starred in a Hallmark rom-com each year since 2020, with her most recent appearance in the Easter 2023 movie, “The Blessing Bracelet.”
“Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home” will premiere on May 17 at 9 p.m. Eastern time, with re-airings scheduled for May 19, 22, and 25.
Hallmark is Producing Many More Mysteries in 2024
Hallmark“Signed, Sealed, Delivered The Vows We Have Made”
Penny and Schull’s new mystery is part of Hallmark’s commitment to producing more mysteries in 2024, from introducing new potential franchises to reviving popular series.
On February 6, Hallmark Media announced that it was rebranding the 20-year-old Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel to Hallmark Mystery, with a recommitment to producing new mysteries after several years of pulling back on and even canceling some of its signature family-friendly, crime-solving dramas, like “Mystery 101.”
The day before the rebrand took effect, on March 5, Hallmark programming executive VP Lisa Hamilton Daly told Multichannel News (MCN) why she felt doubling down on producing mysteries is so important for the company.
“You know, I’ve been at Hallmark for a little over two years,” the former Netflix exec told MCN. “And when I got here, they had kind of backed off of the mystery content and they’d leaned more into what we were calling ‘romantic drams.’ But those weren’t really…they didn’t feel distinct enough to me from what we were doing on the main channel. And they weren’t really rating as well as we would have liked them to.”
In a March 6 press release, Hallmark said that it would debut “a fresh, new on-air look” and promised a “record number of all-new and returning mystery series.”
Among the duos returning with new installments of their recently-launched mystery franchises are Nikki DeLoach and Andrew Walker, with a new “Curious Caterer” movie premiering on April 26, and a repairing of Paul Campbell and Aimee Garcia for a sequel to “The Cases of Mystery Lane.”
Hallmark Mystery also introduced several new mysteries during the first quarter of 2024, including Brooke D’Orsay and Gilles Marini‘s “Crimes of Fashion: Killer Clutch” and its first period piece mystery, “Gilded Newport Mysteries.”
On March 19, Hallmark announced it’s reviving the popular “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” franchise, featuring Crystal Lowe, Kristin Booth, Eric Mabius, and Geoff Gustafson. The crew of crime-solving postal workers will appear in two new movies in 2024, which began filming on April 8 in Vancouver, according to UBCP/Actra.
Meanwhile, days after the newest “Hannah Swensen Mystery” premiered on Hallmark Mystery, the cast will begin filming another new movie on April 11, according to Creative BC, tentatively titled “Appetite for Murder.”