Reviews

The beginning of this series started out well. Good writing, good acting, interesting premise. Then they turned Miss Bramwell into a whining, ill-behaved child and it went downhill from there. She continually jumped to conclusions, behaved like a spoiled brat, and threw temper tantrums befitting a six year old.

The series opens with her graduating medical school. I can't phathom how she accomplished this with the temperament they've written for her.

I stuck with this show for the first three years because I wanted to know what happened to the other characters. They were all people I could care about or at least understand. I had a very hard time finding anything likeable about Eleanor after the second season. They should've ended it after the third. Instead, they aired two shows for the fourth, which plummeted off the cliff like Wylie Coyote holding an anvil!

The only reason I gave it 3 stars was due mainly to David Calder. His acting was outstanding!

I'm watching this for the second time. The first time, I was intent on the story and the actors. Both above par for a Hallmark Christmas movie. Joan Cusack never disappoints, and she's just in a supporting role.

The real reason I feel compelled to write this review is to set the record straight about the set. I don't want anyone who's watched this movie to think that trains in the US look like this movie! Sadly, they do not.

I took a cross country train (Oakland to DC) in 1990, and one from Oakland to Minneapolis in 2022. Trains don't travel across the entire country, you have to switch in Chicago. Neither style of sleepers look ANYTHING like this movie!

So this review is strictly about the set decorations. Don't be fooled; Hollywood magic is on full display here. Amtrak is not.

It's a show about the commercialism of Christmas. Quaint, old fashioned, a classic since 1965, and some of the best Christmas music you'll ever hear. There have been years I've truly identified with Charlie Brown and wondered why there's so much hustle and bustle over getting the right present instead of celebrating what the season is really about.

Now I'm 65 and I've watched this show every year since it's been on the air. It's part of my Christmas traditions. That is until this year. This year Apple TV has the rights to A Charlie Brown Christmas. And if I want to watch it I have to subscribe to Apple TV Plus.

10 stars for the show zero stars for Apple TV.

Ironically, I read the novella about 1 week before discovering it on Netflix. I was excited to view anyone's vision of this gripping character study. Unfortunately, vision and was homogenized into a one dimensional horror flick. I am disappointed. The novella was full of rich characters, and by the end of the book, I knew them. I had sympathy, or not, for them. The movie took that away. It filtered it down to a one character vision, and robbed me of the rest of the story. Read the book folks, it's SO much better.