@lizburrito Published March 9, 2026, 3:30 p.m. ET Where to Stream: Sugar & Vice: A Hannah Swensen Mystery Powered by Reelgood More On: Hallmark Channel Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sugar & Vice: A Hannah Swensen Mystery’ on Hallmark, Where A Murder At A Masquerade Ball Gives Hannah A New Case To Solve Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Romance at Hope Ranch’ on Hallmark Channel, Where A Single Mother Moves To New Mexico, Buys A Ranch, And Reconnects With An Old Flame Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Stars Between Us’ on Hallmark Channel, Where An Aspiring Reporter And An Astronomy Professor Seek A Total Eclipse Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Because of Cupid’ on the Hallmark Channel, Where A Modern-Day Cupid Uses A Love Potion To Get Two Best Friends To Fall In Love A woman is murdered during a masquerade party at a hotel and the only person who can solve the crime is baker-slash-amateur detective Hannah Swenson. In the new Hallmark Channel movie Sugar & Vice: A Hannah Swensen Mystery, Alison Sweeney reprises her role as Swensen, a successful baker who – with some help from her glamorous P.I. mom and her prosecutor boyfriend – tracks down the killer when she’s not busy running her bakery.
The Gist: It was a dark and stormy night. Locally famous baker Hannah Swensen (Sweeney) attends a masquerade ball at the Lake Eden Inn to commemorate the hotel’s grand re-opening; Hannah is there in both a personal and professional capacity. She’s provided all the desserts for the party, but she, along with her co-worker Lisa (Juliana Wimbles), her mom Delores (Barbara Niven), her boyfriend Chad (Victor Webster) and her mom’s boyfriend Ron (Mike Dopud), who happens to be the sheriff, are all in attendance and dolled up in costume as party-goers.
At some point during the party, Lisa and Hannah hear a commotion coming from one of the offices in the hotel and discover the body of hotel employee Brandy (Marlie Collins), who is dead as a doornail with a knife in her back. Most of the movie takes place over the course of the party as Hannah notifies Chad (a police officer himself) and Ron secure the scene and question guests. The storm outside causes a tree to fall on the road out, so no one can get in or out for a while Hannah and her pals investigate and identify possible suspects. Could it be Kurt Howe (Paul McGillion), the hotel owner that was having a secret affair with Brandy? Or Cheryl Howe (Teagan Vincze), the jealous wife who was being cheated on? One of Brandy’s co-workers? For some reason, only Hannah can figure it out.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Hannah Swensen series offers up cozy mysteries in the same vein as Murder, She Wrote (in fact, there are several other Hannah Swensen mysteries under the franchise title Murder, She Baked).
Performance Worth Watching: As always with the Hannah Swensen movies, Barbara Niven’s character, Delores Swensen, is inexplicably glamorous and overly theatrical, and despite seeming out of place and in stark contrast to her much more level-headed daughter Hannah, she adds the only real interesting touches to an otherwise bland film.
Our Take: I’m starting to think that the Hannah Swensen movies might be delivering diminishing returns as the series goes on. While there’s something to be said about bringing back characters we’ve come to know and who are generally pleasant and inoffensive, the mystery of Sugar & Vice is decidedly bland. All of the suspects are broad stereotypes, either cartoonishly villainous or clueless, and the fact that there’s a dead body on the premises of the hotel during a party seems to bother absolutely no one. I’m all for cozy mysteries where someone’s death is not a tragedy but a plot point, but here, the death is treated almost as a joke most of the time.
Alison Sweeney actually wrote the script for Sugar & Vice, and while the veteran actress is one of the more polished performers onscreen, the script is flimsy and lacks suspense or any genuine suspects. Part of the joy of any murder mystery is attempting to solve the murder on your own, but in this case, there were barely any clues and the mental guesswork felt tedious. Hallmark’s mystery series tend to be some of their better movies, but if you’re considering watching Sugar & Vice, think twice.
Our Call: I wanted to like Sugar & Vice: A Hannah Swenson Mystery because I’ve grown fond of the recurring cast and cozy, familiar setting in the Hannah Swensen movies, but this iteration felt like it was missing an ingredient or two. SKIP IT.
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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.
