View From the Phlipside Radio - Fairy Tale TV

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

I am fascinated by the hot , new idea for this television season.  Now the first thing you need to know is that TV programmers are constantly looking for the next hot new idea.  The second thing you need to know is that they almost never actually come up with something that is both hot and new.  In fact new is so astoundingly elusive that the word really has no meaning in this context any more.  It’s just holding a place really.

And that’s not even new.  Some of the greatest shows of all time weren’t really new.  For example in many ways our own beloved “I Love Lucy” wasn’t really new.  The concepts, the format all pretty standard.  What elevated it was the performance and the writing.  So to be honest while they give lip service to new TV programmers are far more interested in whatever might turn out to be hot.

And you never know what it might be.  Let’s face it taking a bunch of whiny people, dumping them on an island and filming them as they slowly devolve into back biting conniving animals isn’t really the guarantee a hit show.  but then you never know.

So I’m interested to see not one but two major networks taking a stab at fairy tales as the basis for prime time series.  NBC is going with “Grimm” which is a direct nod to the Brothers Grimm from our childhoods, while ABC is going for a slightly broader look with Once Upon a Time.  I’ve seen Grimm and like it, haven’t seen Once Upon A Time but they grabbed 16 million viewers their first week so it must have something going for it.

The idea of using fairy tales as the basis of your story line is an interesting twist.  Fairy tales or folk tales are a common denominator in all human cultures.  They are stories that teach, most often some level of ethic or moral lesson.  The original Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, were social scientists rather than children’s story tellers.  Which is good because their versions of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Rapunzel among others are very different from the Disney versions most of us know.

But the real question is how will these stories translate into 21st Century television?  The base stories are time proven classics.  So it will rely on the cleverness of the writers and the quality of the actors to see if they will live happily ever after.

Call that the View From the Phlipside