Movie Review: Mortal Mishaps - A Morning Show Mystery

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Strong mystery; fun cast

Cons: Usual Hallmark cheese

The Bottom Line:

Poisoned producer

Causes chaos for Billie

Starts fun new franchise

Wake Up to a New Mystery Franchise from Hallmark

January of 2018 brought us a new mystery movie franchise from Hallmark Movies and Mysteries – the Morning Show Mysteries based on books written by Al Roker.  We got to meet this new set of characters in Mortal Mishaps, and it was a fun introduction.

Our main character this time around is Billie Blessings (Holly Robinson Peete), who runs her late father’s restaurant and hosts a popular cooking segment on the morning show, Wake Up, West Coast.  For the last three months, she’s also been filling in as co-host since the former co-host accidentally dies from her nut allergy.  But that is about to change since the executive producer, Rudy (Ben Wilkinson) is about to name the new permanent co-host at a party that night at Billie’s restaurant.

However, tensions among the staff leading up to the dinner are running high.  Rudy arrives late and sick.  When he stands up to make his announcement, he collapses and dies.  One of the EMT’s that arrive on the scene notices the smell of bitter almonds, which leads to the conclusion that Rudy was poisoned.

When the police show up, they arrive in the form of Ian (Rick Fox), Billie’s high school sweet heart.  Ian isn’t inclined to think that Billie is guilty, but the police do focus on Maurice, Billie’s head chef at the restaurant.  That’s crazy since Maurice had no motive, so Billie begins digging in, hoping to find the truth.  Can she clear Maurice’s name?

For some reason, this movie took me a bit longer than normal to figure out all the characters and their relationships to each other.  Maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention early on or they weren’t as clearly defined early on.  Either way, that wasn’t an issue too long, and I was soon able to follow all the suspects and their motives.

And there were plenty, which makes for a good mystery.  I thought I had it figured out a little early, but they managed to throw in a twist that threw me off the scent.  Of course, Billie figures everything out and it makes perfect sense once she does.

We start the movie with the last few minutes of a broadcast of Wake Up, West Coast, and it is laughably cheesy, even by Hallmark standards.  Fortunately, as soon as that ends, the cheese factor really drops.  In fact, it seems a little less than normal Hallmark movies overall.

I had a lot of fun spotting Jesse Moss in the cast.  He plays a member of the crew, and he’s been in several of these mystery movies on Hallmark over the last couple of years.  I also really enjoyed Billie’s relationship with her aunt Casandra as played by Karen Robinson.  The rest of the cast was fine as well.

Hallmark mystery movie addicts can rejoice – this looks like a fun new franchise we will hopefully be enjoying for many more movies.  And if you’ve missed it, you’ll want to catch a rerun of Mortal Mishaps soon.