Week five of Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas 2026 brings three new movies and a brand-new Mistletoe Murders. Mistletoe Murders airs Thursday, November 12, followed by My Christmas Cowboy with Amy Acker and Luke Macfarlane on Friday, November 13, The Nights Before Christmas with Tyler Hynes and Laci J. Mailey on Saturday, November 14, and Mistletoe and Mimosas with Tamera Mowry-Housley and Kristoffer Polaha on Sunday, November 15. Everything airs at 8 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel and streams the next day on Hallmark+. This week has a little bit of everything, from a Texas ranch to a Christmas Eve that will not end to a holiday bar battle in upstate New York.
We will be reviewing each new movie the day it premieres. If you are still catching up on week four, start with our reviews of Merry Memories, Holiday Unplugged and A Season of Promises.
Mistletoe Murders, Thursday, November 12
The second episode of Mistletoe Murders Season 3 airs Thursday, November 12, at 8 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel and streams the next day on Hallmark+. Emily and Sam, played by Sarah Drew and Peter Mooney, work to prove the innocence of the wreathmaker played by Catherine Bell, picking up the first mystery of the season. Emily also tries to stay unattached in the present while she looks back on the mistakes of her past and the obligations of her future. Sierra Marilyn Riley, Kylee Evans and Jean Yoon also star, and you can read what Drew told fans about this season on the Hallmark Christmas Cruise in our premiere story.
My Christmas Cowboy, Friday, November 13
My Christmas Cowboy premieres Friday, November 13, at 8 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel and streams Saturday on Hallmark+. Acker plays Meg, who gave up on being a newscaster after a disastrous audition in college and is now happy as a news producer in her small town of Fern, Texas. Macfarlane plays Billy Kane, her college crush and audition partner, who is now a celebrity host in Hollywood about to lose his career over an on-camera mistake. His publicist sends him home to Texas to lay low with his sister, played by Sara Canning, and her family. Meg is still upset that Billy used her failed audition to get the job himself, but she keeps running into him, because his nephew Graham, played by Isaiah Haegert, is in the horse therapy program her dad runs at their ranch. When her dad gets hurt right before the ranch’s annual Reindeer Roundup, he asks Billy to host, and Meg has to teach him to ride and rope in just a few days. Brent Stait plays Meg’s dad.
Acker co-wrote My Christmas Cowboy with her best friend and writing partner, Emma Bates, and in a Q&A Hallmark shared with press, she said the idea goes back to the pandemic. “I started writing during COVID, and the first thing I wanted to try and write was a Hallmark Christmas movie,” she said. Warren Christie, her co-star on a series at the time, thought it would be fun to play a character who gets canceled, and that sparked Billy’s story. Acker grew up in Dallas, with a dad from East Texas and a mom from West Texas, and she wrote her family right into the script, from sayings like “too big for your britches” to the traditions Meg’s family keeps. Tamales on Christmas Eve, cookie decorating and cutting down a tree at a tree farm all come from her own Christmases, and the Texas-themed Christmas tree in the movie, with little neckerchiefs for ornaments, was inspired by a tree her mom once decorated “with everything Texas.” The Rising Saddles horse therapy program in the story came from a friend who had a great experience with one.
Luke Macfarlane fans are in for some fun, because he had never been on a horse before filming. “We joked that we’d spent about seven hours rehearsing a dance scene, but he’d only had about 20 minutes of riding instruction,” Acker said. “Maybe those should have been reversed!” Acker was briefly on her high school’s country-western dance team, the Wildcat Wranglers, so the two-step came back to her quickly, and she said Macfarlane claimed he could not learn choreography, then came back about 30 minutes later knowing the whole thing. “I quickly learned he’s good at just about everything,” she said. She also credits him with keeping Billy from coming across as a jerk. “He made Billy impossible not to love,” she said, adding that she “found a wonderful friend for life.” Watch for a mechanical bull scene, which started out on the page as mutton busting until the crew found a mechanical bull at the location used for Loretta’s, and a tie-cutting at the Reindeer Roundup inspired by Trail Dust, a Dallas spot Acker went to as a kid. The food is all Texas too, with queso, kolaches, pecan pies and Franny’s Fruitcakes, a nod to the fruitcake her parents get as a gift every year. Encores of My Christmas Cowboy air Saturday, November 14, at 6 p.m. ET, Sunday, November 22, at 2 p.m. ET and Wednesday, November 25, at 8 p.m. ET.
The Nights Before Christmas, Saturday, November 14
The Nights Before Christmas premieres Saturday, November 14, at 8 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel and streams Sunday on Hallmark+. Hynes plays Marty, whose life is in a bit of a rut, and on Christmas Eve he wishes he had more time. Thanks to some holiday magic, he wakes up the next morning and it is Christmas Eve again. Marty decides to make the most of it, seeing New York City in a new way, learning an instrument, picking up new languages and reading every book he can find. Then he meets Chloe, played by Mailey, a journalist who just lost her job and is having a rough day, and he falls hard. The catch is that every time December 24 starts over, she has no idea who he is, so Marty sets out to win her over again and again while he figures out how to finally reach Christmas Day. Hynes is also an executive producer, and he bought out Vancouver’s historic Park Theatre, which appears in the movie, for a free fan screening at noon on premiere day.
Mistletoe and Mimosas, Sunday, November 15
Mistletoe and Mimosas premieres Sunday, November 15, at 8 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel and streams Monday on Hallmark+. Mowry-Housley plays Claire Bennett, a Manhattan business consultant who inherits her beloved Uncle Lou’s Christmas-themed bar, The Tipsy Reindeer, in upstate New York. The bar comes with a lot of debt, partly because Uncle Lou was so generous to people in town and partly because a trendy new club called Algorithm has been stealing business. Claire plans to turn things around and sell to someone who will protect her uncle’s legacy. Then she meets Zach, played by Polaha, Algorithm’s part owner and manager, who wants to buy The Tipsy Reindeer to expand. The two agree to a 12 Days of Christmas-inspired competition to see who can bring in the most business. If Claire wins, Zach uses his contacts to find her the right buyer. If Zach wins, Claire agrees to consider his offer. Jennifer Robertson also stars, Mowry-Housley is an executive producer, and this is the first time she and Polaha have starred together.
Find every schedule, review and story in our Countdown to Christmas 2026 hub
