FUNatics Review – Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home on Hallmark Mysteries. Hallmark does more than just romance. They have a full and fun Mysteries Channel.
Premiering on Friday, May 17, 2024, at 9/8C is Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home. This movie stars Brendan Penny as Detective Jack Quinn and Amanda Schull as Dr. Rachel Hunt. You can stream the movie now on the Hallmark Movies Now streaming service.
The movie is about Dr. Rachel Hunt (Amanda Schull) a smart and intuitive small-town family doctor. Once a trauma surgeon in the US Army, after losing her husband in combat, she retired from her commission and is now settling into a quiet, new life back home with her widowed father (Gerard Plunkett) and her teenage twins, Chloe (Isla Crerar) and Matthew (Jett Klyne). When favorite patient Ross Alexander (Greg Kean,) suddenly dies shortly after Rachel gives him a clean bill of health, she cannot shake the feeling that there is more to it.
Her attempt to involve the authorities is met with resistance by charming police detective Jack Quinn (Brendan Penny), who wants to help but is not convinced that this is anything more than a death by natural causes. Rachel puts her background in military forensics to work and starts to investigate what could possibly have caused the beloved newspaper editor’s death. With support from community friends, new and old, Rachel persuades Quinn to keep digging. But when finding the search for a killer puts Rachel’s life in danger, she realizes that small-town life will not be nearly as quiet as she had planned.
Spoilers ahead! Turn back if you don’t want any!
Rachel is a thorough doctor. She is adjusting to life as a civilian with her kids and her dad. The kids want a dog. She finally relents and goes to an adoption event to look. She bumps into Jack, who is holding kittens that he names Ying and Yang. They start bantering about her being a dog person. It’s a cute exchange.
Later on, she is outside her practice, when a man collapses with his dog. She finds out that the man is a down-on-his-luck vet. She has him admitted to the hospital. We find out that he has diverticulitis. He begs her to take care of his dog, Mickey, for him. She agrees, much to her family’s delight.
The death of her patient, Ross, bothers her. The man was in peak health. She begs the coroner to do an autopsy. They say no. She asks the family to request it, but they say no. She turns to the police. The detective happens to be Jack, the cat person. They start working together. He initially says there’s nothing he can do but when she shows him the threats that Ross had received, he slowly starts to believe that there may be something wrong.
Things start unraveling and we find out eventually that the man had in fact been poisoned. We see that Rachel is followed. She gets called to a parking garage by the victim’s sister-in-law and Rachel finds herself being shot at. It turns out that the whole thing was planned by and carried out by the sister-in-law and her brother. It was over money.
Meanwhile, we do see her teens interacting at school and home. Chloe is asked to join the cheerleaders but told not to bring her twin brother, Matthew around. Chloe starts shutting him out. She eventually wakes up and ditches the mean cheerleaders. Good sister!
All in all, I really liked the movie. The chemistry between Brendan Penny and Amanda Schull was great. The story was great. I have one complaint. Just one. I can’t believe that a detective would allow her to just watch interviews. That’s it. That’s my one complaint.
Overall, if you are a fan of the Hallmark Mysteries brand of movies, you should enjoy this one. Great cast and a good story. I would like to see more of it.
Family Practice Mysteries: Coming Home is from Family Practice Road Productions Ltd.
and Front Street Pictures Inc. Allen Lewis, Michael Shepard, Alan Ett, and Bruce Hendricks are executive producers. Produced by Charles Cooper. Michael Robison directed from a script Barry Schkolnick.
