More on the Hallmark Channel

You might think (especially if you've been to film school) that most made-for-TV movies are nothing but shoddy melodramas with has-been actors and clunky plotlines. I thought that before I lived here, I really did. But then I moved into a Socialist-era high-rise apartment on a busy Bucharest street, and started making a documentary about abandoned children with disabilities, and then it got cold and rainy and gray outside. The Romanian language is full of irregular verb conjugations and unlikely words of Slavic origin and declensions that make your head spin. Bills must be paid in person in public spaces where the concept of forming a line and waiting your turn has not entirely caught on yet. Romania's not a third-world country by any stretch; in fact my life is materially quite comfortable. But there are no quiet, cozy cafes with non-smoking areas, no Borders bookstores, no trashy People magazines in the supermarket checkout aisle, no good friends to visit on a rainy day. And it's expensive to just pick up the phone and call my mom. With the absence of these little comforts, so central to my lifestyle in the U.S., I felt a little ache of homesickness. Until I discovered channel 13.

From the dusty vaults where bad films go to die, Hallmark has rescued and resuscitated Brittany Murphy's tour de force performance as a patchy-haired Jewish concentration camp inmate, Marlee Matlin's traumatic campus rape, and Judd Nelson's affable radio personality who turns out to have a violent side. Sitcoms that barely saw the light of day in the U.S. get primetime slots in Romania. On a day when I've struggled to understand the words and the culture around me, it's good to come home, fix a little plate of mamaliguta cu branza si smantana, and sit down in front of the TV for a good helping of recycled Americana. With its safe, predictable three-act structures and stilted dialogue, the Hallmark Channel reminds me of home.