Tom Selleck brings ‘Jesse Stone’ to Hallmark

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“Two years. Where you been?”

It’s actually been three years-plus in real time, but those are the first words spoken – by William Devane, back in his role as a therapist – to Tom Selleck’s (and late novelist Robert B. Parker’s) loner-lawman title character in “Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise,” the new Hallmark Channel movie reviving the franchise in which Selleck made eight previous films for CBS.

Debuting Sunday night, the drama also will be shown Oct. 25 on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.

Also co-written by Selleck with Michael Brandman (his fellow executive producer on the “Stone” movies as well), the new story takes the personally troubled small-town police chief to Boston to consult on a murder case. The presumed perpetrator has been captured, but Stone believes there’s more to the matter that imperils more lives.

Gloria Reuben also reprises her part from earlier ”Stone” tales, with Leslie Hope (who has appeared with Selleck on CBS’ Friday drama series “Blue Bloods”) and Luke Perry as cast additions.

“We owe a lot to Hallmark,” Selleck says. “They’ve been running ‘Jesse Stone’ marathons on weekends, and they do it over and over again – and they perform. It was a real blessing that they let us pick up where we left off.

“I think they’re trying to broaden their array of movies, and this certainly has a lot more edge than some of the things they’ve done. And they let us do it.”

With usual director Robert Harmon also back, “Lost in Paradise“ is the first in a two-picture “Jesse Stone” deal Selleck and Sony Pictures Television made with Hallmark.

“I kind of said, ‘I won’t do it otherwise,’ ” the “Magnum, P.I.” Emmy winner muses. “Let alone play this guy again, I haven’t written this kind of thing in a long time. I was faced with a blank page, which was kind of frightening. It just was a lot, and I was going, ‘Can I do this?’ By the time I finished the script, I felt very, very good about it.”

The movie was made in Halifax, Nova Scotia, last spring (for “about a million” dollars less than Selleck had to work with previously, he allows) while the star was on hiatus from his weekly job … which came in handy for another pivotal piece of “Lost in Paradise” casting. A cafe owner is played by Amelia Rose Blaire, also seen last season on “Blue Bloods” (now in its sixth year on CBS) as a survivor of family murders who was given away at the altar by New York Police Commissioner Frank Reagan (Selleck).

“I was absolutely blown away by her,” Selleck recalls. “In the time you have to do television, I said, ‘This actress is wise beyond her years.’ I was in the middle of writing this ‘Jesse Stone’ then, so guess what? I wrote for her. I gave her a boxed set of the (earlier) movies and said, ‘Just know the part’s going to come to you first,’ and I was able to write to her talent. And she took it and made a really three-dimensional character.”

A sign of what keeps “Jesse Stone” unique for television is the “Lost in Paradise” opening, a Selleck-Devane conversation that lasts about three minutes before the credits appear. That helps reintroduce what Selleck terms “the mystery of Jesse and where he’s at – and that’s a big deal, with his toxic problems. That seems to hold the audience until the mystery of what he’s involved in takes hold. With three years passed, we had to re-establish this universe before we could get into the story.”