The Hannah Swensen Mystery series on the Hallmark Channel has endured for several years now, like the network’s own version of Murder, She Wrote or Columbo, but as with any long-running franchise, the quality can vary from episode to episode. Fortunately, the latest release, Best Served Cold, is one of the better installments of the series. In it, baker Hannah Swensen (Alison Sweeney, who also wrote the script) starts looking into the disappearance of a lawyer and ends up stumbling on the dead body of another man. Are these things linked? Hannah, her private eye mom Delores, and a cheesecake recipe can help answer that.
The Gist: In the latest Hannah Swensen mystery, Hannah (Sweeney) and her mom Delores (Barbara Niven) are investigating the disappearance of a local lawyer, Lucas Straub. This isn’t the first time Lucas has gone missing, he’s the type to take off for a weekend away from the wife to go fishing without telling anyone (men!), but this time, it’s different. Lucas has been missing for days, his wife is genuinely concerned, and strangely, just before he disappeared, he handed over all of his casework to Hannah’s boyfriend Chad (Victor Webster), which is how Hannah has gotten involved in the first place. The whole situation seems fishy.
Hannah starts gathering clues around Lucas’s house to see if she can piece together his whereabouts, and stumbles on a cigar box from a local shop in town – strange, because Lucas doesn’t smoke. And so, Hannah and her mom head to the cigar store to see if they can find any information about Lucas there, when they find a dead body. It’s not Lucas, but it is a con artist named Paul Jacobson, a man that Lucas (and now Chad) have been prosecuting in a fraud case.
With so many suspiciously linked clues, Hannah can’t help but rope herself in deeper to the investigation, which becomes more and more dangerous as someone starts threatening her to lay off the case. As she hunts for Lucas and tries to identify Paul’s killer, she has to toe the line between her zealous opportunity to solve what coule be a series of deadly crimes, while also not interfering with Chad’s job as a lawyer and the police’s investigations. Oh, and her expertise as a baker becomes a key element to cracking the case.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The fact that this movie becomes a courtroom drama halfway through makes it different from most other Hannah Swensen movies. It’s certainly no A Few Good Men, but it’s not too far away from feeling like an especially quirky episode of Ally McBeal.
Performance Worth Watching: I’ve sung the praises of Barbara Niven , who plays Delores Swensen in the Hannah Swenson Mysteries, in the past, and in this installment she continues to shine. In fact, Niven has a much larger role than she has in previous films, and she is given some of the best lines, delivering them with the perfect amount of her signature dry but campy humor.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: I’ll admit that the previous Hannah Swensen Mystery, Sugar & Vice, had me starting to doubt that this franchise still had anything left to give, but after watching Best Served Cold, which arrives not even three months after Sugar & Vice, I’m reconsidering that opinion. This latest film weaves multiple mysteries together – Who killed Paul? Where is Lucas? And why are their wives so shady? – but also becomes something of a half-serious, half-comedic courtroom drama, too, as the fraud trial of Paul’s wife Mitzi becomes a centerpiece of the story. (While the court case is an important component to the investigation, it also gives Niven an opportunity to ham it up; she’s brought in as a witness owing to her role as a private investigator who had been looking into Paul and she makes it her job to mug for the jury.)
The movie weaves an elaborate web of alliances and relationships among the dead man, his missing lawyer, and the suspects at large, and it keeps up the suspense as we unravel who is connected to who and how. Toward the end, every scene is yet another satisfying explanation and the film pays off all the mysteries it set up early on. And to boot, I’m not sure if the prop food in any of these movies has ever looked better; Hallmark should be selling Hannah merch and goodies, I’d be the first customer in line for them.
Our Call: There’s something different and more compelling about this Hannah Swensen Mystery compared to past installments. The relationships feel deeper, the characters seem to be having more fun, and the mystery itself is more layered than a wedding cake. STREAM IT!
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
