In the spotlight

Dallas' most famous Christmas-light home to shine on new Hallmark show

The famous Burkman Holiday Home of Frisco is making its Hallmark TV debut.

Facebook/BurkmanHolidayHome

A family Christmas light display that's so over the top, it looks like a Hallmark movie set is about to get its close-up on the famous holiday-entertainment network: The Burkman Holiday Home of Frisco will appear on the first episode of a new series called Ready, Set, Glow!, premiering on the Hallmark+ streaming service Thursday, December 12.

On the show, host Wes Brown will meet four families "whose Christmas decorations have been making spirits bright for generations," says the series' website. "The only thing better than these displays are the heartwarming stories behind them."

The Burkman family - husband-and-wife Corey and Jen, adult sons Alex and Jack, and Jen's dad, Eugene Skalskyj (known as "Sanpa") - have been lighting up their Frisco home at 3809 Hazelhurst Dr. for nearly a decade. Their "extreme" display - 115,000 lights and counting - attracts thousands of visitors from North Texas and beyond each year. It also raises money for a scholarship fund, supports families in need, and donates to the nonprofit The LiyanaStrong Foundation.

The Burkmans are no strangers to the TV spotlight. In 2021, they competed on ABC's holiday decorating show The Great Christmas Light Fight and appeared on Live with Kelly and Ryan.

Ready, Set, Glow! isn't a competition, but an unscripted series that goes "behind the lights," Brown says. The show will stream on Hallmark's new membership-based streaming platform, Hallmark+ (access a free trial here).

Wes Brown, Ready Set Glow, Hallmark+ Wes Brown, host of the new Hallmark+ show Ready, Set, Glow!Photo courtesy of Hallmark+

We chatted with Jen Burkman recently about the family's experience on Ready, Set, Glow!, how filming compared to The Great Christmas Light Fight, and what's new with their lights display this year.

CultureMap: How did you get picked to be on this new Hallmark show?
Jen Burkman: I received an email from the production company at Hallmark. They found us through our Facebook page, and by Googling large light displays. We come up as one of the top displays in the country. It’s exciting because it’s a brand new show and we are on the very first episode. We’re very honored to be selected for that.

CM: What is the story will they tell on the show?
JB: They will have three different things that they do in each episode. They will showcase homes with large displays that have a cause behind it, neighborhoods that go extremely far out for decorating, in towns that resemble a Hallmark Christmas town. So it is not a competition. This was something that really drew us towards it. They wanted to know more about our backstory, why we do what we do, and what it means to the community. That encompassed everything that we are about. (The Burkmans started their holiday displays when son Alex, who was autistic, developed a love of lights.)

CM: When was filming ... did you have to keep it a secret?
JB: The filming was in the middle of December 2023. We did have to keep it secret on social media. However, they did allow us to reach out to our neighborhood. So it’s even more special to us that we got to personally invite our neighbors to be a part of the TV show with us. The majority of the filming was just our family, but there are going to be elements of our neighborhood and our neighbors cheering us on.

Burkman Holiday Home Frisco Jen Burkman's father is known as "San-pa." Photo courtesy of Burkman family

CM: What was the actual filming like?
JB: We had a great time! We had the production company from Glass Entertainment with producer Matt Carter, who was amazing. He brought along about 10 people from his production company - light and sound guys, drone operators, boom operators, sound eliminators. There was so much equipment.

We did some interviews inside our home, so you’ll get to see some of our overly decorated inside of our house, and obviously a ton of footage outside, as well. It took us about 15 hours to film, for probably 15 to 20 minutes of airtime. We had our immediate family and probably 50 people from our neighborhood. We have the most incredible neighbors who are so supportive of our display so it honestly meant the world to us that they were involved.

CM: How did filming this show compare to your experience on The Great Christmas Light Fight?
JB: It was totally a different experience. The Great Christmas Light Fight was an honor to be selected; over 200 people auditioned and only 24 of us were selected. So even though we didn’t win our episode, it was a dream come true to even compete on that scale. But it was a competition, so I think we felt more stressed out because we really wanted to win. We also filmed Light Fight in 2020. So all the Covid protocols were in place, we had to get tested every single day, and we couldn’t have a crowd.

Hallmark was an absolutely different experience. We felt relaxed, and we had so much fun knowing that we weren’t competing against other families. We just got to share our story and our love for the holidays. And to be able to celebrate our neighbors and our nonprofit foundation was pretty outstanding.

CM: Any fun behind-the-scenes stories to tell?
JB: Within a half a day, we felt like we had known the crew our entire lives. By 11 o’clock at night, we were still doing interviews in our living room, and our family and the film crew were just slap happy. We were snort-laughing at ourselves for saying things incorrectly and practically falling asleep in our chairs. One thing that totally made us laugh, because it never happens, in the middle of filming with a huge crowd in our front yard, this rabbit came across the driveway and just sat in the display, looking at everybody, as if it was a lawn figurine. That rabbit may have its own spotlight on the show. We will see.

Burkman Holiday Home, Christmas lights The display features some new arches for picture-taking this year.Facebook/Burkman Holiday Home

CM: What's new with your holiday display this year?
JB: We have 115,000 lights, 90% LED. So the light bill is cheaper than the August AC bill. We have a new area in the display called "Santa Land." It is all things Santa, including a Santa toy box that you can stand in for a selfie. We introduced Bluey at the display this year, and it was a total hit. We have some new arches to take pictures in and walk-through and you’ll see some old familiar friends doing some guest appearances. 2025 will be our 10th anniversary of doing displays in this house so we’re expecting great things for next year.

CM: What's it like to be Christmas-light famous?
JB: We are so honored to be a part of this community and to continue to have so many people come year after year. On Sunday, I had a beautiful lady show me a picture of her daughter as an infant in front of the display, and her daughter is now 5 years old. To see them take the same picture, year after year, of their little girl just truly touches my heart. We love being part of families' Christmas traditions. We love being able to support our sponsored families every year. And being able to hand scholarships out to these amazing individuals in our community is pretty heartwarming. We couldn’t do it without our neighbors, the communities of Frisco and Little Elm, and everybody who drives from all over Texas, just to come see our lights.

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The Burkmans' episode of Ready, Set, Glow! will stream on Thursday, December 12 on Hallmark+. The Burkman Holiday Home is at 3809 Hazelhurst Dr., Frisco, 75036. Open from 5:30-10 Sunday-Thursday and 5:30-11 Friday-Saturday through December 28. Follow them on their Facebook page for updates, such as special themes for photo sessions. For a list of other spectacular Dallas-area Christmas lights, go here, and for best neighborhoods, visit this list.

burkman christmas lights holiday home hallmark tv celebrities media

Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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