Branching Out

Hallmark Channel (there are three; one emphasizes cozy mysteries while one is more a "drama" channel with some older Hallmark films, The Waltons reruns, etc.) is trying to diversify these days. There is more gay and lesbian content, a few more non-white leads, and know of two recent films involving blind people. 

Have ways to go but it's a start. We also have a few films -- there still are usually the standard storylines (this includes non-urban settings; small towns and farms are favorites with a few travelogue-type films, often with Lacey Chabert) -- with novel stories. One film [one of those generic types of titles] involved a woman separating from her husband and she stayed separated even when the husband started to have a change of heart.  It was pretty good.

Branching Out concerns a woman who had a daughter with IVF. Sarah Drew also played in a Hallmark film involving a woman who loses her sight. I thought that one was done pretty well (it was based on a series of books). She was good in this film as well. She voiced the dim member of the popular clique on Daria. 

The film is not about the IVF process. The daughter is in elementary school and doing a family tree project. The mom does not have much family (her dad left while she was growing up) and is unmarried. 

So, the daughter is upset she does not have much of a tree. She knows about IVF and wants to find the dad. They take a genetic test and quicker than it probably would actually be in real life, the dad is found. We get a lesson on the different types of families. And, this being a Hallmark film, the mom and biological dad eventually fall for each other.

I am wary about that part of things. It is quite true that sometimes children find out about their biological parents (gay couples have children too so sometimes the person can be the biological mom). I think this tends to happen later than the events of this film. But, it does happen. 

Sometimes, the person forms a connection with the child. The romance is a bit much, but yeah, it's Hallmark. I guess overall the film was decent. It examined the difficulty of the mom relating to the new members in her daughter's life and so on. As usual, the woman had an interesting professional job (an architect partnership) and a great house.  

I had some problems with the ease of finding the dad and then how easily he came into the daughter's life. He is a Mexican-American -- a few Hallmark Channel films have light-skinned people of color in the leads or as love interests. A channel like Up TV is more likely to have non-whites. 

Overall, decent try.