Television series
Grim Tales
- Fairy tale
- Comedy
- Dip in and out
Rik Mayall sits in a creaky storyteller's chair and performs darkly comic retellings of fairy tales and folklore, punctuated by his rubber-faced pratfalls and cartoonish voices. It's grotesque, silly, and designed for children who enjoy the macabre without real threat. A bridge between Roald Dahl's nasty edge and pure vaudeville.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you love grotesque, mischievous children's stories read aloud with a performer's relish, where the grimness is part of the fun and a single voice does all the work.
Skip it if you want polished animation or a fast-moving plot, since this is one man in a chair, with short episodes that rely on his delivery rather than spectacle.
What it asks of you: Each episode runs about ten minutes and asks you to sit still and listen closely, with the attention going to the voice and the wording rather than to any visuals.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Jim Henson's The Storyteller1988
Jim Henson's adaptation of global myths and folk tales, narrated by a gravelly old man and a dog. Gorgeous stop-motion puppetry and genuinely eerie storytelling—darker than you'd expect from the name.
But The episodes are standalone, so there's no narrative momentum. Some of the creature design is genuinely unsettling in ways that might alienate younger viewers.
The Box of Delights1984
A classic British Christmas serial with genuine magic, sinister villains, and a boy racing through a mythological landscape. Whimsical but never saccharine, with real stakes and strange beauty.
But It's a period piece made for television in the 1980s, so the pacing is glacial by modern standards. The special effects, while charming, are transparently low-budget.
Danger Mouse1981
An animated British spy comedy where a white mouse with an eye patch battles a toad villain. Absurdist humour, rapid-fire jokes, and genuine affection for its own ridiculousness.
But The animation is cheap and jerky, which is part of its charm but exhausting if you need fluid motion. The jokes rely on puns and British references that don't always land.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Grim Tales
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen1988
Both prioritize the performer's personality and comic delivery over plot coherence. Both take pleasure in making the familiar grotesque. Both trust children to enjoy things that don't make sense.
Terry Gilliam's baroque fever dream about a man whose tall tales become literally true. Ornate, digressive, completely unhinged—pure storytelling energy in mechanical, hand-crafted form. Rik Mayall would understand this film's DNA.
But The plot is impossible to follow and actively doesn't matter. It's a technical nightmare with unfinished scenes; the budget collapsed mid-production. Visually exhausting.
More like this (6)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail1975
Absurdist medieval comedy that swings wildly between slapstick and clever wordplay. Anarchic, irreverent, and built on the same logic as Grim Tales—taking familiar stories and breaking them.
But Some sketches drag; the film's construction is deliberately disjointed. If coherent plotting matters to you, this will frustrate.
The NeverEnding Story1984
A boy escapes into a magical book where reality bends in unsettling ways. Baroque production design, genuinely strange creature design, and a melancholy undertone that respects the audience's intelligence.
But The pacing is slow and dreamlike. If you need forward momentum or contemporary effects, the artificiality of the puppetry might pull you out.
Labyrinth1986
Jim Henson's fairy tale where a girl navigates a massive maze to rescue her brother, guided by riddles and populated by grotesque puppets. Dark, theatrical, and genuinely affecting.
But The plot is straightforward to the point of boredom. David Bowie's codpiece is distracting, and the 1980s aesthetic has aged awkwardly.
Fraggle Rock1983
Jim Henson's puppet comedy about creatures living beneath a rock, solving problems through song and friendship. Colourful, weird, genuinely funny, and totally unpretentious.
But It's unabashedly earnest and occasionally saccharine. The puppet work, while impressive, requires acceptance of a very artificial performance style.
The Company of Wolves1984
Both remix traditional stories for subversive effect. Both understand that folklore is meant to be weird and slightly dangerous, not sanitized. Both use the storyteller frame to justify tonal whiplash.
A grandmother tells her granddaughter a series of increasingly dark fairy tales that blur into reality. Surreal, sensual, deeply strange—it's folklore filtered through fever and desire rather than safety.
But It's an adult film about sexuality and danger masquerading as a fairy tale. Genuinely unsettling and occasionally explicit. It will disturb you.
The Secret of NIMH1982
Both use grotesque character design to create a world that's beautiful and unsettling at once. Both trust that children respond to strangeness and genuine emotion over cuteness. Both understand that the best scary stories are the ones that linger.
A mother mouse embarks on a hallucinatory journey to save her children, guided by mystical rats. Hand-drawn animation with genuine darkness—atmospheric, strange, and emotionally complex in ways most children's media isn't.
But It's slow and deliberately dreamlike, with a genuinely melancholic tone. The animation is beautiful but static; nothing moves quickly.
