There’s something about fairy tales that resonates throughout the generations. We remember the stories from our childhood — the princesses and princes, the grotesque creatures and devious villains, the near triumph of evil, defeated by good just at the end — and we pass them on to our children and grandchildren. They’re timeless stories we love to hear (and tell) over and over.
For years, television producers have tried to reframe fairy tales in new ways. In the early ‘80s, actress Shelley Duvall gathered an astonishing array of actors and directors for her star-studded Showtime anthology series Faerie Tale Theatre. Later in the decade, ABC put Snow White, Prince Charming, the Evil Queen, and the Magic Mirror in Los Angeles after a thousand-year sleep in the cute sitcom The Charmings. And CBS turned the story of Beauty and the Beast into a dark-hued romance for three seasons. This year, two new series are placing familiar fairy tales in a modern context.
NBC’s Grimm, which airs on Friday nights, is set in Portland, where homicide detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) develops the ability to see supernatural creatures. He discovers that he is descended from a group of hunters known as Grimms. The Grimms have taken charge of preserving the balance between the physical and mythological worlds and protecting humanity from otherworldly forces.
Burkhardt learns that his abilities as a Grimm relate to the cases he must solve. He begins to make the connections between the grisly crimes in Portland and the fairytale creatures behind them. He teams up with a “reformed big bad wolf” named Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell) who helps him solve the cases and make sense of the fantastical realm, and he discovers more about his destiny as a Grimm.
Grimm is a dark program, rooted in more literal interpretations of the Brothers Grimm’s frightening fairy tales than most adaptations. Additionally, the show tackles some of the more obscure stories in the Brothers Grimm canon. The program relies on moody cinematography, grotesque makeup, and special effects to tell the show’s tale. The production design on Grimm goes a long way toward establishing the series’ dramatic tone.
The producers and writers have gone to great lengths to create a complex fairy tale mythology on Grimm. Many of the creatures have menacing German names — terms like Blutbaden (literally “bloodbaths”) for the wolves like Monroe and Hexenbiests (hexen = “witch” and biest = “beast”) for the witchlike beings who appear as attorneys in Portland. The show’s scribes have developed elaborate backstories for the characters, such as intense rivalries between certain creatures and archenemies for others. The Grimms also have a deeply layered history which Burkhardt continues to discover.
Though Grimm’s critical reception has been mixed, the show has found a loyal audience, and NBC has given it a green light for the full season. Time will tell if the series’ edgy spin on fairy tales will generate long term success.
ABC has also entered the fantasy-themed programming fray with Once Upon A Time, which airs on Sunday nights. Lost writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz conceived the series, which centers around the residents of Storybrooke, Maine, who are in reality the classic characters from fairy tales and victims of a curse by the Evil Queen, though they do not know their true identities.
As revenge for Snow White’s (Ginnifer Goodwin) marriage to Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) enacts a curse banishing all the residents of the Enchanted Forest to “someplace horrible” where only she is guaranteed a happy ending. In the present day, ten-year-old Henry Mills (Jared S. Gilmore) travels to Boston to track down his birth mother Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison), who gave him up for adoption. She agrees to drive him back to his home in Storybrooke. On the ride from Boston to Storybrooke, Henry shows Emma his book of “real” fairy tales and explains the town’s curse to her. He mentions to Emma that she is the one who is destined to break the curse.
The lives of the residents of Storybrooke parallel their identities in the Enchanted Forest. The Evil Queen is Regina Mills, the mayor of Storybrooke and Henry’s adoptive mother, while her Magic Mirror (Giancarlo Esposito) is newspaper reporter Sydney Glass. Snow White turns into Mary Margaret Blanchard, Henry’s favorite teacher, and Jiminy Cricket (Raphael Sbarge) becomes Archie Hopper, Henry’s counselor. Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle) is Mr. Gold, the town’s mysterious “owner” and wealthiest citizen, who may or may not be the only other person besides Regina who is aware of their enchanted former life.
Once Upon A Time relies on a device similar to the flashback/flash-forward sequences that made Lost so
distinctive. The show’s narrative shifts between modern day Storybrooke and the Enchanted Forest. This method of storytelling allows viewers to see the back stories of each of the fantasy characters and connect the dots of similarity between the characters’ fairy tale setting and modern existence. It’s an effective device, and it allows the series a bit of variety in its pace.
Because it is an ABC production, Once Upon A Time takes full advantage of its access to Disney’s stable of characters. Though the fairy tales on the show are largely in the public domain, the producers and writers rely on Disney’s versions of the stories. Characters like the Seven Dwarfs go by the names from the Disney film, as do Jiminy Cricket and the Blue Fairy. Archie Hopper even has a pet dalmatian named Pongo (after the patriarch in 101 Dalmatians). In addition to the main plot centered around Snow White, the writers are employing other fairy tale subplots involving Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast along with others throughout the season.
Once Upon A Time debuted to generally favorable critical reception and gave ABC its highest Sunday night ratings in three years. Ratings have been relatively stable since the show’s debut, but the question is whether the program can sustain its premise over the long haul.
Grimm and Once Upon A Time have joined the long list of television series based on well known and beloved fairy tales. Why do producers keep going back to these stories? Why do they resonate with so many people? Mary Margaret Blanchard offers an answer in the pilot episode of Once Upon A Time:
What do you think stories are for? These stories are classics. There’s a reason we all know them. They’re a way for us to deal with our world, a world that doesn’t always make sense.
[...]
I gave the book to him because I wanted Henry to have the most important thing anyone can have — hope. Believing in even the possibility of a happy ending is a powerful thing.
Perhaps she’s right. It’s possible that, in difficult times like these, people need the escape that fairy tales offer. Maybe that’s why these shows have garnered such a following.
—
Chris Queen hails from Covington, GA. Check out his website, ChrisQueen.net, and follow him on Twitter.
I periodically watch both, but a couple of sour notes:
I get tired of how networks slavishly imitate each other when a new trend pops up. I swear they must have spies who hack each other’s scripwriters. One season it’s alien invasion series, two or three at a time, and another it’s this fairy tale stuff.
Also, the “Grimm” premise is a bit of a stretch. The Brothers Grimm, their actual life’s work, and most of the stories they gathered bear almost no resemblance to what NBC has conjured up. I wonder what fans of Supernatural and Sam and Dean Winchester over at the WB channel think of this?
I’m surprised that “Grimm” survived. Not because it’s not a good show but because the geniuses at NBC scheduled it opposite “Fringe” and “Supernatural” – both shows with audiences that are natural fits for Grimm. Of course the scheduling geniuses did manage to kill off “Prime Suspect” by slotting the crime drama against the crime drama “The Mentalist”. I guess that’s the sequel rule applied to TV: if another network’s crime drama is successful at a certain time then you must run your new crime drama at that same time. Hollywood forbid running your new crime drama against a lawyer or medical show because those time slots are for lawyer or medical shows… everybody knows that.
The portrayal of Rumpelstiltskin on Once Upon a Time–both the writing and acting–is superb. Overall, I’d only rate the show as average, but the Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold character is very intriguing. Uttering the line, “Magic always has a price,” he schemes, manipulates, and deals to get what he wants.
Robert Carlyle is a class act who lends his class to every show or movie he’s in. Hamish Macbeth is still my favorite, though.
– was the book and television series The 10th Kingdom. Wonderful, but a sequel never developed.
Yet one more reason why I’m glad I don’t have a TV.
I believe that it was G. K. Chesterton who said, “Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”. Whether the writers of Grimm and Once Upon a Time will admit this remains to be seen, but I suspect the hope that they will accounts for these shows’ popularity.
Once upon a time is a show I can watch with my nine year old son that we both enjoy. It is pretty clean and it has lots of characters to root for and against. I like the fact that the evil queen and rumplestiltskin are three demensional characters and I love the backstories that explain how they became who they are. Its a simple show with enough twists and turns to keep it intetesting and I hope it makes it.
Thanks, that was my first question- can I watch it with kids? The second was: do I want to? you answered both.
I caught on to ‘Grimm’ about middle of the second episode. I won’t miss it now and it’s a good dish washing settle me down before switching to ‘Blue Bloods’ in the next hour. ‘Grimm’ is a nicely woven horror/thriller/comedy, seeming intense one moment and relieved by the comedy of “reformed big bad wolf” named Monroe the next. It borders on teen fare bent towards adult interest. As long as it doesn’t break down to children’s programmin, I’ll keep watching.
“Once Upon a Time” is the far superior show.
I had high hopes for “Grimm,” but in watching the pilot, I saw that it was going to be nothing more than a variation on the countless shows about vampires/ghouls/ghosts/etc. Sorry, been there, done that.
I’m rather enjoying Grimm, even thigh the main character seems a little cloying. Now what we need is a program that reconsiders the neoplatonic science of Ptolemy. It’s the rationale behind alchemy, the tarot deck, the kaballah, and words like sanguine, saturnine, common sense, and other expressions whose origins have been forgotten.
Grimm is the better show because it is male-oriented. The protagonist is male, he is conflicted between his twin duties as a cop and Grimm (which so far complement and do not conflict with each other) and the desire to marry and have kids with his fiancee. It is more adult and “grown-up” about keeping the monsters at bay without being consumed by them. [As his predecessor his late aunt was.] The protagonist is a different sort of Grimm than the others, because he is molded by being a cop — as long as the supernatural creatures don’t hurt anyone, he ignores them. And nice twist, the supernaturals are afraid of him and think him semi-mythological.
Once is a chick-show. It is basically, “find the Alpha” and concerned with status, the “icky” nature of ordinary life (female Prince Charming/Snow White fairy tale being preferable to the here and now) and the desire for aristocracy, “special” people and the peasants. In other words, just another chick show like Desperate Housewives, Lost, etc. A critics darling precisely because it is a tedious rehashing of female-audience pandering (instead of challenging) that makes up nearly ALL of Broadcast TV and most of Cable.
Fairly noxious in cultural aspect is the fairy tale of Prince Charming and Snow White. Few women are princesses, and even the most beautiful and desirable if they choose badly get cheated on, betrayed, and suchlike because the sexier a man is, the more other women want him. THAT fairy tale promotes the illusion of control and mastery over sexy/dominant men and helps basically accelerate the bad choices leading to single motherhood (the need to balance out sexiness in men with reliability as a father/husband). Grimm by contrast while filled with magical elements has as its main story the need to balance family and duty.
I’m a fan of both shows, which generally means they will be canceled before the year is out …
Fairy tales carry fragments of the history of very real people, history which was preserved in oral tradition using symbols and myth. Archetypal symbols are those which are common to humanity – things like the sun, a mother and child, things we have always seen, everywhere, in every culture. Damsels in distress, heroes, and villains and the stories they are in are situations which are common to people everywhere. They are powerful and compelling. What the media does with them may not portray their original intent or history, but the use of the archetypal symbols makes the stories relate-able,even though in some cases quite disturbing. I like Once Upon a Time, but those who enjoy thrillers may like Grimm. I prefer decoding the origin of these tales; visit Once Upon a Time: World of Symbols blog for some info.