Ask JKM a Question #54: Fantasy Television?

A reader named Marilyn M. writes:

“You write a lot about horror and science fiction TV on your blog.  Don’t you watch fantasy on TV?  And if so, which shows are your favorites?”

Thank you for the question, Marilyn.  I do watch fantasy -- although it’s not my favorite genre -- and there’s been a bit of a TV boom lately.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been terribly impressed with many of the new series.

I screened all episodes of Grimm’s (2011 - ) first season, for instance.  The first fifteen episodes repeat the same predictable police procedural over and over, without variation; without interest.  Then, in the last handful of first season episodes, the creators start to vary up the formula and start adding significantly to the background mythology of “fairy tale” monsters in the real world.  Those last few episodes are really very good, and I enjoyed them.  

As a consequence of the last batch of shows, I’m cautiously optimistic about the program’s future.  I do plan to watch the second season, since I did see and note the dramatic improvement.  The actors are good, and the characters are fun, particularly Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell), the vegan werewolf.  The series just needs to (permanently) escape the predictability of the procedural format.

I also screened the first five or six episodes of Once Upon a Time, (2011 - ) but then stopped.  The premise in this series didn’t seem very well-thought-out, enunciated, or executed.  Specifically, the program deals with the idea of an alternate universe where all fairy tale creatures are real.  This place is termed the universe of “happy endings.”  Our universe, by comparison, is ostensibly the one with the unhappy endings. 

But from what I saw, the storybook universe isn’t substantively different from ours.  Families are separated, lovers are lost, and people are transformed permanently into dolls, and so forth. There’s no meaningful distinction, really, between the Fairy Tale universe and ours, at least not in the happy/unhappy dynamic explicitly stated.   

Many of the central performances in Once Upon a Time I also find grating, particularly Robert Carlyle’s turn as Rumpelstiltskin, which is too broad and theatrical for my taste.  Loved him on SGU, but his character doesn’t work for me here.  Finally, the series seemed to be moving at a snail's pace, which I know is an accepted element of the soap opera format, but which I found frustrating.

I started to watch Merlin (2008 - ), a British TV series, too, and turned it off half-way through one episode.  It was so clean, neat, and modern in language and expression that I found I couldn’t believe in the world of the story for a minute. It was way too 21st century teen-bopper-ish...like knock-off Joss Whedon.

That leaves only, I think, Game of Thrones.  I have not seen a single episode, but I understand the series is quite good, and will be catching up with the series soon. My wife is also very curious about Game of Thrones so I’m looking forward to it in the near future.

I should also add, I heard some really good things about Legend of the Seeker, but learned it was canceled.  At some point, I'd like to go back and check that one as well.

Don’t forget to ask me questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com