Justin Achilli

Last night while skimming Netflix's "Movies You'll Love" subsection, my wife came across Jim Henson's The Storyteller in the mix. What a find! I only vaguely remembered this series from the late 1980s, and what I did remember of it were none of the details, only partial images that were enough to tantalize me and make me feel a sweet sense of eidolon, eluding me by lurking just wholly outside my memory.

We cued up the shows and, unsurprisingly, they're great. I've always felt that the Muppets had a sense of the grotesque and even a tiny bit of the macabre to them — I still remember vividly a terrifying dream from almost thirty years ago in which the goats from the Muppet Show sang a scary rendition of James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend". The creature factory's critters work extremely well here, populating a series of retellings of European folk stories with the same moody presentations as the original Grimm's fairy tales. A lot of pedigreed British actors show up in the series, too, with the whole season narrated by John Hurt in a bit of perfect casting. Anthony Minghella — yes, Cold Mountain and The English Patient Anthony Minghella — wrote for the series, adding a sense of depth not usually found in what was then billed as children's fare (let along now, when most children's fare equals farting octopi and booger guns).

The art direction is beautiful, the lighting and camera are evocative, and the stories themselves strike the same chord of human resonance that made them so relevant in times long before this modern age of instant communication. There's a bygone charm to the inarguably old-fashioned creature and special effects at work in the series, too. If you enjoy fantasy, fairy tales, the Muppets, or just extremely well-done productions, take a look at Jim Henson's The Storyteller.

Oh, and speaking of John Hurt, have you seen The Proposition? You should.