Contrary to what it was undoubtedly hoping for, the most shocking part of Lifetime’s forthcoming Christmas movie featuring a sex scene is that it will be between a man and a woman. Other than that, everything else about it is just par for the course for Hollywood these days.
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Lifetime apparently makes a series of Christmas movies on an annual basis. Kinda like how the Hallmark Channel does. Or perhaps they’d be better identified as Christmas-themed movies. Or even Christmas-timed movies. They really have little, or even nothing, to do with Christmas other than the time when they’re set.
Just like Die Hard has nothing to do with Christmas other than the time when it’s set, which is why it objectively cannot be considered a Christmas movie.
Anyway, with that chumming of the water done, back to Lifetime’s new movie. It has a title that seems very Lifetime-y: A Cowboy Christmas Romance. The title’s also remarkably similar to A Cowboy Christmas, which apparently is a Canadian movie that released just a few weeks ago.
Lifetime’s A Cowboy Christmas Romance stars Jana Kramer, who seems to be a mainstay at the network. Variety reported that she’s starred in eight movies for it to date. The outlet also spoke with Tia Maggini, senior vice president of scripted content for Lifetime, on why the cable channel is featuring the first sex scene in a Christmas movie.
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“We think that there’s an audience out there that’s hungry for grown-up romance, and we’re looking forward to adding some smolder to the usual holiday sugar and spice,” Maggini reportedly said.
She added, “We love trying new things, and we’re excited about this new ‘first’ for us for a holiday movie.”
As far as ‘new’ things go, some might find a sex scene in a Christmas-timed movie to be an odd choice. Then again, Lifetime is the same network that gave the world Dance Moms. So on second thought, maybe it’s not that odd after all.
Variety also reported that Kramer commented on the scene. On an episode of her Whine Down podcast, she described it as the cowboy laying “me down on some hay, and then we, you know.” Later she remarked that, “Obviously, it’s still Lifetime, it’s still family. But it was pushing limits there, too.”
Was she insinuating that Lifetime is now known for offering family-friendly fare? If so, it wasn’t always that way. It once used to be famous for churning out movies-of-the-week, and they generally were not something parents — parents of a different time — allowed kids to watch.
In fact, when thinking about Lifetime, the type of movie many people might associate with it would be something like Soccer Mom Madam. That’s a real movie by the way — a real Lifetime movie. Better yet, Jana Kramer stars it. Indeed, the trailer hints it has everything one would expect from a film by the network.
Ultimately, Lifetime might get decent ratings for A Cowboy Christmas Romance. There’s likely a fan base for it. But it probably won’t pick up any points from the ‘shock value’ of its sex scene, because it isn’t all that shocking.
Nor will it be shocking when someone makes a Christmas movie featuring something even ‘edgier.’ Hollywood is, after all, quite predictable at this point.