Two shows on two different American networks are bringing fairy tales back to Prime time in, you guessed it, two different ways.
I'll start first with ABC's Once Upon a Time which for reminded me a lot of NBC's 2000 TV miniseries, The 10th Kingdom. The land of fairy tales, lead of course by Snow White, mixes in with real life. Sadly the special effects have changed much either in 11 years. Maybe I'm spoiled from watching special effects done for the BBC and ITV by The Mill but the special effects for Once Upon a Time are cheap and cringe worthy. With special effects being such a big part of films nowadays television needs to either catch up with the quality of special effects in films or just give up. The cheap aesthetic of the special effects takes away from the quality of the show and disrupts the enjoyment of the narrative. Added to this is the fact that Once Upon A Time isn't necessarily new, I've mentioned The 10th Kingdom before, and maybe it's the recent obsession with the story of Snow White, one that I never really liked in the first place, that makes this show seem a little redundant. I'm not quite sure where the plot is going to go besides the obvious of Emma Swan (and really? You're going to use the last name Swan after Twilight? How about some originality people) rescuing the fairy tale. The plot seems obvious yet a little hazy which in the long run will help the show maintain its viewers. On the positive side the show does have a couple of high caliber actors in it which Grimm lacks. Gennifer Goodwin plays Snow White a.k.a. the school teacher Ms. Blanchard and Robert Carlyle plays Rumpelstiltskin a.k.a. Mr. Gold. Both of whom do a great job and add subsistence to the show although I think Carlyle does a bit more. Also Goodwin looks way better with her long Snow White hair than the pixie cut of Ms. Blanchard. I'm not quite ready to give up on the show but it is on shaky ground. I'm hoping in the following weeks it picks up.
NBC's Grimm I have to admit I have a bias towards because it is filmed and set in my city of Portland, Oregon. Not only that but it's also produced by Buffy and Angel producer David Greenwalt and Angel producer Jim Kouf. Going into the pilot this show had higher expectations for me than Once Upon A Time did but Grimm, for the most part, lived up to my expectations. Now I know some of my enjoyment of the show is seeing my city on the screen and having the city not pretending to be another city. Beyond that personal enjoyment the show brought energy with it. It was creepy but in a good way. As in I could still watch it without being scared but was enthralled with what was happening. There was basically a good level of suspense. However, there were still some problems that may be addressed in later episodes. First off the acting. Unlike Once Upon A Time, the actors are mostly all from TV but not in a good way. The performances were very flat and is evidence of why people think television acting is worse than film acting. I don't believe the main character and there's a large gap of identification with the characters because they have no warmth. David Giuntoli plays the main character, cop Nick Burckhardt who for me is too much of a city boy to be believable. It's like he's trying to be a cop in New York not Portland. Once again this brings me back to the reason I want the show to succeed being filmed and based in Portland. It doesn't fit the profile of Portland especially since the city has been getting coverage lately after the success of Portlandia. Silas Weir Mitchell who plays the good wolf brings good humor to the show. What was a bit disturbing with the pilot episode was that Nick's partner shot the bad guy dead without having found the girl. Instead of going for a wound shot in the leg he shoots him in the back. This unfortunately is what can happen and there have been real cases of this happening with the Portland police and since they use actual Portland police cars I'm not sure how that's going to go down. Not that that's really a fault of the show just an observation of mine.
For me the clear winner of these two show is Grimm although I think both of them have a long way to go in plot and character development to be great shows that will stand up in the ratings and maintain their audiences.
No comments:
Post a Comment