Rueben's Ramblings

Here is the long list of the programming options to expect on TV this coming week:

On November 9, the season finale of The Handmaid’s Tale will air online on Hulu; also that same day, the 5th season premiere of The Crown will air online on Netflix; and that same night, the 56th Annual CMA Awards will air on ABC at 8 PM.

The BET+ holiday movie The First Noelle will debut online on November 10. After 20 years of friendship, Terrance and Noelle finally decide to date each other but ultimately break up when Terrance moves to London for work. Now that Terrance is back in Atlanta for Christmas with his new girl, also named Noelle, our lead is determined to get him back and say goodbye to being friend-zoned forever. The film stars Novi Brown, LaLa Milan and Todd Anthony.

On November 10, the new series The Calling will debut online on Peacock. The drama tells the story of NYPD Detective Avraham Avraham (Jeff Wilbusch), whose belief in mankind is his superpower when it comes to uncovering the truth. Guided by a deep sense of spirituality and religious principles, Avraham is left to question his own humanity when a seemingly routine investigation turns upside down. The cast includes Steven Pasquale, Michael Mosley, Stephanie Szostak, Karen Robinson, Ben Shenkman, Constance Zimmer and Chris Sullivan.

The series finale of The Good Fight will air online on November 10 on Paramount+; while that same day, the second season of the Netflix series Warrior Nun will premiere online.

On November 10, the holiday movie Christmas on Mistletoe Lake will debut at 8 PM on Lifetime. Every Christmas, Reilly Shore (Genelle Williams) picks a random spot on the map to take an adventurous trip. This year, that destination is the quaint hamlet of Mistletoe Lake. As she arrives, Reilly discovers that the town’s lone bed and breakfast is full due to the town’s annual Christmas Harbor Festival. When 12-year-old Emma (Hattie Kragten) invites Reilly to stay on her dad’s boat, she learns that Emma’s dad, Raymond Mitchell (Corey Sevier), is selling his boat and can’t participate in the festival. Saddened, Emma enlists Reilly’s help to convince Raymond to enter into the festival so they can have one last perfect Christmas on Mistletoe Lake.

The Netflix feature film Falling for Christmas will debut online on November 10. A newly engaged, spoiled hotel heiress (Lindsay Lohan) gets into a skiing accident, suffers from total amnesia, and finds herself in the care of a handsome, blue-collar lodge owner (Chord Overstreet) and his precocious daughter in the days leading up to Christmas.

On November 11, the half-hour anthology series Circuit Breakers will debut online on Apple TV+. The show is about middle-schoolers in the near future that uses science fiction as a backdrop to tell universal stories about growing up. Each installment features a sci-fi twist on kid relatable stories, with the intent of kids and families asking themselves how they would act in each unique situation.

The following movies will all debut on November 11 on Discovery+:

* One Delicious Christmas – The future of Vermont culinary destination Haven Restaurant and Inn rests squarely on the shoulders of Abby Richmond (Vanessa Marano), who inherited the property from her parents. Unfortunately, managing both the restaurant and the inn is a 24/7 commitment, leaving no time for Abby to have a personal life. Her best hope is to secure an investment from restaurant mogul Alexandra Grantham (Kathy Maloney),who would provide much-needed resources and guidance. But to do so, she’ll have to navigate rough waters after top food critic Tom Kingsley (chef Bobby Flay) visits Haven and gives Alexandra his menu feedback. Hot-shot chef Preston Weaver (Alex Mallari, Jr.) is brought in by Alexandra to shake up the holiday menu after Abby unexpectedly loses her longtime chef. Unbeknownst to Preston, the menu was curated by Abby’s late father, and she’s having a tough time letting go of it. Despite their undeniable chemistry, will they be able to put aside their differences in time for Alexandra and Tom’s Christmas Eve dinner visit, which will determine whether she invests in Haven or not?

* A Christmas Open House – Melissa Norwood (Katie Stevens) is an ambitious Atlanta property stager who teams with her old high school crush, David Phelps (Victor Rasuk), to sell her newly married mom’s home in their small Georgia hometown. The place is cozy but hasn’t been updated in decades, so the two join up to renovate the place before a couple of wealthy potential buyers are due to see the house on Christmas Eve. Melissa would love to spend a portion of her budget on a few custom projects created by a unique couple, Henry and Sarah Wright (Ben and Erin Napier), who are gifted at small-town home restoration and appreciate the legacy of a family home. Henry is a master woodworker and custom furniture builder, and Sarah is an artist with an expertise in color and transformative design choices. As Christmas approaches and the tensions grow, so does a romantic relationship between Melissa and David, but the fact that Melissa intends to return to Atlanta and start her own business with the cash she will get from the property sale, while David has no intention of leaving his hometown, could be a deal breaker for their new relationship.

* Designing Christmas – For the past six years, interior designer Stella (Jessica Szohr) and contractor Pablo (Marco Grazzini) have charmed homeowners and viewers alike as cohosts of the renovation show House Sweet Home by relying on their expertise and palpable onscreen chemistry despite not being an actual couple. After the owners of the home slated for their upcoming holiday episode pull out, Pablo and the HSH team convince Stella to be their next client in hopes of saving the episode and the show itself. This has a trepidatious Stella not only agreeing to renovate her family’s Victorian home with Pablo (a.k.a. the Sledgehammer), but also moving her impending nuptials to fiancé Jack (Mykee Selkin) up several months in a bid to make this their biggest and best episode yet. As Stella and Pablo labor together more closely than ever before to bring her family’s beloved home back from a state of disrepair in time for the Christmas Eve ceremony, Stella confides in her mentor Freddy (Hilary Farr) about the complicated and unexplored feelings that could jeopardize everything.

* A Gingerbread Christmas – After a devastating workplace development throws Hazel Stanley’s (Tiya Sircar) job prospects as a full-time architect into question, she leaves New York City to spend the holidays with her father, Ted (Sugith Varughese), in her suburban Chicago hometown. While there, she discovers that the family bakery is even worse off than she imagined, having been on the decline since the passing of her mother. And to add insult to injury, her former best friend Shelby (Kyana Teresa) has opened a trendy new bakeshop across the street. When all seems to be lost, she gets the idea to enter a gingerbread house competition led by homegrown food celebrity Mark Clemmons (Duff Goldman) offering a $100,000 prize — enough to get the ailing bakery back on track. While working on her magnificent cookie edifice, a romance begins to bloom with a local contractor James Meadows (Marc Bendavid) who — along with his daughter — has been helping her father out by lending his baking prowess to the place while trying to fix it up in his spare time. A series of frustrations and misunderstandings threaten to tear them apart, but will the magic of the holiday lead everyone to have a merry Christmas?

Also on November 11, he limited series The English will debut online on Amazon. An Englishwoman (Emily Blunt) arrives into the West in 1890 looking for revenge on the man she sees as responsible for the death of her son, and meets an ex-cavalry scout (Chaske Spencer) and member of the Pawnee Nation by birth with whom she discovers a possible shared history. The cast includes Rafe Spall, Stephen Rea, Toby Jones and Ciaran Hinds.

The finale of the new drama High School will air online on Freevee (formerly IMDbTV) on November 11.

Also on November 11, the new series Mammals will debut online on Amazon. The show follows the story of Jamie (James Corden), a chef whose world implodes when he discovers shocking secrets about his pregnant wife, Amandine (Melia Kreiling). Jamie finds himself hunting for answers with the help of his brother-in-law Jeff (Colin Morgan). Through this hunt, the cracks in Jeff’s marriage to Jamie’s sister Lue (Sally Hawkins) also widen.

The UPtv holiday movie The Christmas Retreat will debut on November 11 at 7 PM. When Kim’s (Rhiannon Fish) boyfriend breaks up with her instead of proposing, her mom whisks her away to a Christmas retreat where she meets the owner’s unemployed brother, Mark (Clayton James). But will they be able to see past the mistakes neither one wants to admit to and let the magic of the season connect them?

On November 11, the Lifetime movie The Dog Days of Christmas will debut at 8 PM. While visiting her family during Christmastime, Annie Blake (Georgia Flood) decides to help three stray dogs get adopted before heading back into her career working for a global non-profit. But when she runs into local veterinarian Dylan Hawkes (Ezekiel Simat), her old high school debate partner, they team up to save an animal rescue. Ultimately, Annie discovers that finding love, and making a difference in the world, can happen right at home.

The Hallmark Channel movie In Merry Measure will debut at 8 PM on November 11. When pop star Darcy returns home to spend Christmas with her sister and niece, she unexpectedly finds herself coaching the high school choir with her onetime rival, Adam. The film stars Patti Murin, Brendan Penny and Jennifer Robertson.

On November 12, the UPtv holiday movie A Tiny Home Christmas will debut at 7 PM. In order to save her family’s contracting business, Blair (Rebecca Dalton) reluctantly teams up with her ex-boyfriend (Christopher Seivright) and former co-star of a hit home design reality show to build a tiny home for the unsheltered in the community, rekindling old sparks in the process … and just in time for Christmas.

The Great American Family holiday movie A Merry Christmas Wish will debut on November 12 at 8 PM. A New York City advertising executive (Jill Wagner) returns to her hometown to sell the family farm, but instead reconnects with her childhood friend (Cameron Mathison) and gets involved with organizing the yearly Winter Wonderland, which takes place on the property.

On November 12, the holiday movie Reindeer Games Homecoming will debut on Lifetime at 8 PM. MacKenzie Graves (Sarah Drew) is a brilliant, competitive, crossword-puzzle-loving biology teacher in Vermont who recently lost her father, beloved fire chief and the heart of the town’s holiday fundraising tradition the Reindeer Games. Every year since his death, she competes with her dad’s former team, a group of colorful retired firefighters, to win the Games and keep his tradition alive. This holiday however, her world is rocked when fading Hollywood star, and Mac’s high school crush, Chase Weston (Justin Bruening) comes home for Christmas to visit his pregnant sister and nephew and is begrudgingly roped into participating in the Games. When the opportunity to compete against her former megacrush arises, Mac is determined to show him up and win the Kris Kringle Cup at all costs. As the competition heats up, so does the spark between Mac and Chase, and Chase soon finds himself eager to not only win the games, but also to win her heart.

The Hallmark Channel movie The Royal Nanny will debut on November 12 at 8 PM. Claire (Rachel Skarsten) is an MI5 agent who goes undercover as the royal nanny. She must overcome the challenges of her assignment, like resisting the charms of Prince Colin (Dan Jeannotte), while keeping the family safe at Christmas. The film also stars Greta Scacchi.

On November 12, the holiday movie Our Italian Christmas Memories will debut at 10 PM on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. The Colucci siblings, in an effort to jog the memory of their grandfather who is struggling with dementia, set out to recreate their late grandmother’s legendary pasta sauce. The movie stars Sarah Power and Beau Bridges.

The 2-hour season premiere of Yellowstone will air on Paramount Network on November 13 at 8 PM followed by the debut of the new drama Tulsa King at 10 PM. Tulsa King follows New York mafia capo Dwight “The General” Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone), just after he is released from prison after 25 years and unceremoniously exiled by his boss to set up shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Realizing that his mob family may not have his best interests in mind, Dwight slowly builds a “crew” from a group of unlikely characters, to help him establish a new criminal empire in a place that to him might as well be another planet. The cast includes Dana Delany, Domenick Lombardozzi, Garret Hedlund, Martin Starr and Vincent Piazza.

NOTE: The premiere will also be simulcast on Paramount+ where the show will continue to air after its network debut.

On November 13, the UPtv movie The Picture of Christmas will debut at 7 PM. An aspiring storybook illustrator (Chelsea Hobbs) in Manhattan returns home after inheriting her grandmother’s Christmas tree farm. Inspired by the magic of Christmas and the farm’s handsome caretaker, she is reminded of the things she once wanted in life. The film also stars Giles Panton.

The holiday movie Christmas at the Golden Dragon will debut on the Hallmark Channel on November 13 at 8 PM. When Romy and Rick’s parents surprise them with the news that they will be closing the Chinese restaurant they have owned and operated for decades, the siblings each find themselves re-evaluating their futures. Also impacted by the news are the landmark restaurant’s loyal patrons and staff, who have all come to depend on the restaurant over the holidays. The ensemble cast includes Kara Wang, Osric Chau, Sara Canning, Antonio Cupo and Barbara Niven.

On November 13, the Great American Family movie My Best Friend’s Christmas will debut at 8 PM. When a woman (Breanne Hill) returns home to find her ex (Colton Little) in a relationship, she enlists her best friend to act as her fake boyfriend.

The holiday movie Six Degrees of Santa will debut on Lifetime on November 13 at 8 PM. Christmas enthusiast and single mom Harper (Kathryn Davis) has created a program, Six Degrees of Santa, in which anonymous ‘Santas’ give a gift and set of instructions to be passed along, temporarily enjoyed, and regifted indefinitely. Her goal is to create a Christmas experience that’s real-life, magical, and unexpected. When Harper’s own gift lands in the hands of a leading internet entrepreneur, Jason (Steve Lund), he’s convinced that the original Santa might be his soul mate. He seeks out Harper, as the architect of the program, to help him track down this mystery woman.

On November 13, the season finale of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire will air at 10 PM on AMC.

Lastly, also on November 13, the EPIX drama Rogue Heroes will debut at 9 PM. This series is a dramatized account of how the world’s greatest Special Forces unit, the Special Air Service (SAS), was formed under extraordinary circumstances in the darkest days of World War II. Based on Ben Macintyre’s best-selling book of the same name, the series centers on David Stirling, an eccentric young officer who is hospitalized after a training exercise gone wrong. Convinced that traditional commando units don’t work, Stirling creates a radical plan that flies in the face of all accepted rules of modern warfare. He fights for permission to recruit the toughest, boldest, and brightest soldiers for a small undercover unit that will create mayhem behind enemy lines. More rebels than soldiers, Stirling’s team is every bit as complicated, flawed, and reckless as it is brave and heroic. The cast includes Alfie Allen, Dominic West, Jack O’Connell and Sofia Boutella.

Mark your calendars!