Television series
Jim Henson's The Storyteller
- Fairy tale
- Dip in and out
Nine nights by an imaginary fire: John Hurt, all rasp and mischief, spins half-remembered European folk tales while a sardonic muppet dog heckles from the hearth. Jim Henson's puppetry makes witches, giants and talking rivers feel uncannily physical rather than cute. Twenty-five minutes an episode, gorgeously lit, genuinely eerie in places — built for children who like being a little frightened, and for adults who never stopped.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you love old-fashioned folk tales told slowly, with a warm, mischievous narrator and the handmade charm of puppets and practical sets, the way Jim Henson's own Fraggle Rock and Labyrinth did.
Skip it if you want quick cuts, modern pacing or a single continuing plot, since each short episode is a self-contained tale told at the pace of a bedtime story.
What it asks of you: Each episode runs about 25 minutes and asks you to settle in and listen, with gentle, unhurried rhythms and little urgency beyond the narrator's voice.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
The Dark Crystal1982
Same creature shop, same unflinching belief that puppets can carry real dread and real feeling. Watch it to see the craft that makes Storyteller's forest witches breathe, decades before CGI existed.
But The story is slow and mythic rather than plot-driven, and the puppetry can feel eerie rather than cosy for younger viewers.
Labyrinth1986
Henson's other great dark fairy tale, funnier and glossier, with Bowie as a genuinely unsettling Goblin King and the same conviction that childhood stories have teeth.
But It's broader and campier than Storyteller, more pop musical than hushed folk tale — charming to some, jarring to others.
Faerie Tale Theatre1982
An earlier anthology built on the same idea — famous faces inhabiting fairy tales with real theatrical weight, a wink of humour, and a similar respect for the original stories' strangeness.
But Shot-on-video and stagier than Storyteller's cinematic gloom; the effects are charmingly cheap rather than atmospheric.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Jim Henson's The Storyteller
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Over the Garden Wall2014
Same fireside, frame-narrative logic and the same conviction that old stories are a way of surviving fear — just animated instead of felted.
Ten hushed, autumnal episodes about two brothers lost in a folkloric forest, told with the same patience for dread and melancholy disguised as a children's story.
But It's a cartoon aimed nominally at kids, and some adults will need a moment to take its sadness and dread seriously.
More like this (6)
Pan's Labyrinth2006
Del Toro's fairy tale for adults, built on the same instinct that fantasy and cruelty share a border, with practical creature design that rewards the eye Storyteller trained.
But Set against fascist Spain, it's genuinely brutal in places — nothing here is softened for children.
The Company of Wolves1984
A British gothic Red Riding Hood, all fog and firelight, adapted from Angela Carter — proof that fairy tales were always about desire and danger before Disney sanded them down.
But Stagey and dated in its effects, with an eroticism running through it that's a long way from Storyteller's family register.
Into the Woods2014
Sondheim's musical mashes up several fairy tales and then asks what happens after 'happily ever after' — the same appetite for consequence hiding inside familiar stories.
But It's a full-blown musical, which will delight some viewers and be an immediate dealbreaker for others.
The NeverEnding Story1984
A boy escapes into a book and finds a decaying fantasy world held together by imagination alone — a gentler, more melancholy cousin of Storyteller's frame-within-a-frame structure.
But Very much a product of its decade, tonally uneven between genuine wonder and outright childhood trauma.
Beauty and the Beast1946
Same faith that a fairy tale can be genuinely strange and adult if you trust practical craft over explanation — the aesthetic grandparent of Storyteller's tactile magic.
Cocteau's black-and-white original, made with candles, mirrors and disembodied arms instead of special effects — the ancestor of everything Henson later built with foam and latex.
But It's nearly eighty years old, in French, and its silent-film theatricality will feel alien if you're used to modern fantasy pacing.
American Gods2017
Both dramatize the same argument, that myth survives by migrating into whatever culture will still listen; American Gods just says it in blood instead of firelight.
Old gods and folk tales smuggled into a modern American road trip, violent and explicit where Storyteller is hushed, but built on the same idea: stories don't die, they change costume.
But It's graphic, sprawling and unapologetically adult — nothing about it is fireside-safe.
People
Cast
Production
- Jim HensonExecutive Producer
Recommended by
Fraggle Rock, Monkey, The Chronicles of Narnia, Round the Twist, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, SuperTed, The Witches, R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour, Grim Tales, Mr. Benn, Jamie and the Magic Torch, The Jim Henson Hour, Campfire Tales, The Paper Bag Princess, Willo the Wisp, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child