Double Double Trouble (PF Cherry Productions, Studio TF1 America, Champlain Media, Lifetime, 2026)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday, February 22) my husband Charles and I watched a Lifetime movie called Double Double Trouble which had had its “premiere” on the network the night before but I’d bypassed it to watch the Winter Olympics. Double Double Trouble was on from 4 to 6 p.m. and, as I guessed, it was largely a rehash of the 1948 film A Stolen Life, directed by Curtis Bernhardt and starring Bette Davis and Glenn Ford. Double Double Trouble was one of Lifetime’s “race movies,” essentially their usual formulae with an all- (or mostly-) Black cast. Directed by Gabriel Correa and written by Sa’Rah Jones (that odd spelling of her name is correct; her only credits, at least as referenced on moviemagg.blogspot.com, are the 2023 film Girl in the Closet, a regrettably bad reworking of a true-life case of extreme child abuse, and the three films in their Single Black Female series, which she co-wrote with Tessa Evelyn Scott), it starred Tami Roman as twin sisters Ali and Drea. Ali was the “good sister” and was born 21 seconds ahead of Drea (Charles questioned that and said most real-life twins are born a few minutes apart because the mother’s womb needs that much of a rest between births), and the film starts with Drea in the hospital after her latest attempt to give birth through artificial insemination from her husband Kevin (imdb.com’s page on this show is inadequate and lists only four actors by character name) results in a miscarriage. Drea is anxious to try again even though she’s already failed three times, but Kevin couldn’t be less interested in her; he’s found another Black woman whom he’s impregnated and is waiting for her to give birth. Later someone corners Kevin and shoots him dead, but we can’t tell whether it’s Brea, Ali, or someone else.

Ali is introduced along with Brea as co-hosts of a local cooking show called Double the Recipe which is based around the novelty of being hosted by twin sisters. The two get a meeting with an entrepreneur who wants to take the show nationwide, but only with Ali, not Brea, as the sole host. Brea is a regular at a local coffeehouse where she spots hot, sexy hunk Ryan Jackson (Colin Lawrence) and immediately decides he’s the right man for her. Unfortunately, Ryan, who in addition to being handsome is also a multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur with a company called Reverb Tech, meets Ali at a business conference and falls head over heels for her. Ryan and Ali get to have a lot of sex, and one of their trysts leads to Ali becoming pregnant – which sends Brea into a jealous hissy-fit because conception is an especially sore point for her. Brea responds by spiking Ali’s drinking water with a combination of listeriosis and E. coli, and Ali gets sick; she recovers, but her unborn baby dies. Alas for Brea, the show’s director, Lamar (who it’s hinted is Gay, which inevitably made me look longer and harder at the actor playing him), accidentally caught Brea’s poisoning of Ali on camera and threatens to report her to the police. Brea responds by knocking Lamar out in the parking lot and pushing him into the path of an oncoming car, thereby dispatching him but making it look like the proverbial “accident.” Brea steals the house key Ryan has given Ali and seduces him – he can’t tell the two apart and neither can we except that Ali wears a brighter and redder shade of lipstick, which Brea uses to disguise herself – and then tells Ali that Ryan raped her. This causes Ali to break off their relationship, though later they reconcile after Ali realizes that Ryan is blameless.

It ends in a confrontation at Ryan’s home in the mountains by a lake, in which Brea goes after Ali with a knife, Ali goes after Brea with a gun (left there in a case, which Ali extracts and then is too nervous to load properly, so there’s only one bullet in it), and during their confrontation [spoiler alert!] Ali admits to Brea that she killed Brea’s late husband Kevin (ya remember Kevin?) to help Brea get over him. (That confounded my expectations because I’d thought the story would end with Brea conveniently dead, Ryan and Ali getting together, and Ali getting that great new nationwide cooking show which she could host solo.) The movie ends with Ali dead and Brea taking her place in Ryan’s arms (and bed), though there’s a diabolus ex machina in the person of Ryan’s ne’er-do-well brother Randy (Charles thought Ryan and Randy were supposed to be twins, but I didn’t get that impression), who was serving time in prison as Ryan built his fortune, who shows up at the end. I guess we’re supposed to assume he’s going to kill Brea for whatever reasons obtain in that family. Double Double Trouble has a lot of problems, starting with the silly title (it’s hard not to think of those old Doublemint gum commercials – “Double the pleasure, double the fun!”), but the big one is that Tami Roman is simply too old for her role(s). Makeup department head Kathleen Fowlstone and her associates plastered the stuff on her with a trowel to make her look younger, much as Dick Wolf’s people have been doing with Mariska Hargitay on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit lately. Tami Roman’s imdb.com page lists her birthday as April 17; it doesn’t say April 17 of what year, but her credits list goes all the way back to 1993. She’s certainly well preserved, and I give her credit for helping develop the project (she’s also an executive producer on it, though that’s a nebulous credit that can mean just about anything), but it’s hard to take this project seriously when the leading actress is just too annuated.