Series / Faerie Tale Theatre

"Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall. Welcome to Faerie Tale Theatre."

—Shelley Duvall, at the beginning of each episode.

Faerie Tale Theatre (full name: Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre) is an hour-long live-action children's anthology series created by Shelley Duvall. It aired on Showtime from 1982 to 1987, though it was actually produced over 1982-85. Showtime had a small subscriber base at the time, so it was also one of the first television shows that, with the exception of a Clip Show, was released episode by episode on VHS — many made their video debuts long before they aired on pay cable.

The show brings to life many traditional fairy tales, from standbys like "The Three Little Pigs", "Cinderella" and "Snow White" to more obscure ones like "The Snow Queen", "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers" and "The Dancing Princesses". Some adaptations are Played for Drama, others are Played for Laughs; some are extremely faithful to the original stories, some are playfully loose. Many were directed by such luminaries as (then a mere upstart) Tim Burton and (then certainly well-known!) Francis Ford Coppola, and — owing to Duvall's professional and friendly associations with many major Hollywood performers — often featured an All-Star Cast.

Once available to view on Hulu, the series' entirety is viewable on YouTube.

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Tropes:

• Accidental Pervert: In The Frog Prince, the frog asks the princess if he can sleep with her (as in sleep next to her on a pillow). It goes about as well as expected.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: In the original tale of The Princess and the Pea, the titular princess doesn't arrive at the castle until after the prince has searched for a bride and been dissatisfied with all the princesses he's met. In this adaptation, she arrives near the beginning and spends several days at the castle recovering from a twisted ankle, during which she and the prince gradually fall in love, while the prince's meetings with other the princesses take place simultaneously.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • A minor case for both the frog and the princess in The Frog Prince: unlike in the Grimms' tale, the princess doesn't throw the frog against a wall. (Although she contemplates throwing him out the window.) Instead, he battles and kills a scorpion to save her from being stung, and this makes her apologize for how badly she treated him before and give him a kiss, which breaks his spell.
  • The Snow Queen is a morally ambiguous figure in her original tale, and there's implied to be something demonic about her, since angels have to appear to help Gerda rescue Kai. The Faerie Tale Theatre version is The Mentor to Kai, who also gets rid of the evil goblin that made the magic mirror at the end.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Rapunzel is outed either for asking the Witch why her dress is getting tight around the tummy (implying the prince had gotten her pregnant and she didn't know) or the more famous kid-friendly version - asking in a moment of sheer stupidity why it's easier to let the prince climb her hair. This adaptation gives Rapunzel a pet parrot who unexpectedly says "Come at night, my prince," and "I think I love you. Rapunzel, will you marry me?" in front of the Witch.
• Adaptational Name Change: In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Baby Bear is known as Cubby Bear instead.
• Adaptational Nationality: Sleeping Beauty is set in Russia instead of Charles Perrault's France or The Brothers Grimm's Germany (although the fairies are dressed like Arabs or gypsies).
• Adaptational Nice Guy: In Pinocchio, as in the Disney version and several other adaptations, Pinocchio is much less of a Bratty Half-Pint than in the original book, and instead is just very naïve because he Really Was Born Yesterday.
• Adaptational Species Change: In The Adventures of Pinocchio, the pair of con artists who mislead Pinocchio are a fox and a cat. Here they're two human men, Mario and Vince, although at one point they disguise themselves as marionettes of a fox and a cat. In the same episode, the whale that swallows Geppetto and Pinocchio is an orca rather than a dogfish (as in the book) or a sperm whale (as in the Disney version).
• Adaptational Villainy: In the original Rapunzel story, the witch was a fairly ambiguous character, but she's made outright evil here. She causes Rapunzel's mother to have her cravings so that she can give herself an excuse to take the baby girl. She also shows signs of misandry, of being physically abusive to Rapunzel, and is all but stated to be a murderer and a cannibal.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The Tale of The Frog Prince introduces the prince's parents and fairy godmother, reveals how he came to be transformed, and extends the ending when the king catches his daughter and the (naked) prince in bed together, misunderstands, and separates them until the whole truth is revealed.
  • In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the familiar story is only the first half, while the second half deals with Goldilocks running away from home and moving in with the bears.
  • The Three Little Pigs fleshes out the pigs' and the wolf's personalities and adds a female pig love interest.
  • Little Red Riding Hood gives the heroine an overprotective father and a young apprentice woodcutter love interest, and spends a while with the characters before the main storyline starts.
  • The Princess and the Pea adds a court fool as the prince's confidant and introduces the princess early on to give her a slow-burn romance arc with the prince.
  • Sleeping Beauty includes how the king and queen conceived their daughter, an attempted Arranged Marriage for the princess before she falls under the spell, and some of the exploits of the prince before he came to rescue the princess.
• Adapted Out:
  • Pinocchio omits the Talking Cricket.
  • The Tale of the Frog Prince omits the title character's servant Faithful Henry, as most adaptations do.
  • The Twelve Dancing Princesses is changed to just The Dancing Princesses and the number of princesses is reduced to six.
• Affectionate Parody: "Sleeping Beauty" may be viewed as this, as could the broadly Played for Laughs take on "Pinocchio".
• Age Lift: Many of the characters are portrayed as older than they were in the source tales. For example, Pearl, the Little Mermaid, swims to the surface for the first time on her twenty-first birthday instead of her fifteenth, the title character of Sleeping Beauty is twenty instead of fifteen or sixteen, and Pinocchio, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Snow Queen's Gerda and Kai are all teenagers instead of children.
• Almost Kiss:
  • In The Princess and the Pea, Prince Richard and Princess Alecia are about to kiss in the garden when Queen Veronica comes out of the castle and catches them. This leads to Alecia being put to the test with the pea to prove that she's a real princess.
  • In the penultimate scene of The Dancing Princesses, after Princess Jeanetta accepts the Soldier's proposal, they're about to kiss, when the Soldier sneezes, having caught a cold from getting soaked the night before.
• Ambiguously Gay:
  • The Frog Prince's younger brother, Hal. "He doesn't take much for Princesses. He just likes to meet up with the boys, and go off after dragons."
  • Also, the wizard from "Rumpelstiltskin". His behaviour is very camp, and he seems a little put out when the King finally chooses a bride.
• Anti-Villain: King Vladimir from "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers" is only doing what he does because he does not want to lose his daughter.
• Bait-and-Switch: At the beginning of "Sleeping Beauty," King Boris is lying in bed eagerly waiting for Queen Natasha to join him. Adult viewers will think they know what he's looking forward to... but it turns out that he's waiting for his wife read him a bedtime story. By the end of the scene, it's clear (at least if you pick up on the innuendoes) that they don't even know what sex is, and need a fairy to explain it to them so they can conceive a child.
• Balloon Belly: In Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf has a small one after eating Granny and a huge one after eating Mary (Red Riding Hood) too.
• Bedlah Babe: In "Sleeping Beauty", the prince is at one point being flirted with by a princess called Debbie, who wears this kind of outfit.
• Berserk Button:
  • When in the presence of the mole in "Thumbelina", don't mention the word "progress".
  • In "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", don't refer to Bubba or his ideas as stupid.
• Big Beautiful Woman: The Blue Fairy ("Pinocchio"), as played by Lainie Kazan.
• The Big Bad Wolf: Played straight in "Little Red Riding Hood" with Malcolm McDowell's Faux Affably Evil take. Humorously zig-zagged in "The Three Little Pigs"; Jeff Goldblum's Buck Wolf is powerful and loves to intimidate others, but he's also a grouchy, lazy Henpecked Husband who's only pursuing the pigs because his wife wants one for visiting coyotes, and is all too easy to trick.
• Big Brother Instinct: In Hansel and Gretel, as in the original tale, Hansel is always looking out for his little sister Gretel, and stays optimistic even in the darkest times to keep her from despair. She finally gets to return the favor at the climax when she saves his life by pushing the Witch into the oven.
• Bittersweet Ending: "The Little Mermaid" and "Rip Van Winkle" are both rather faithful adaptations of their source material, down to retaining their bittersweet endings. The former is notable as the last major adaptation of the work prior to the Disney version and its Happily Ever After ending, which many subsequent adaptations would copy due to both Lost in Imitation and the feeling that Andersen's ending is too bitter as is.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad:
  • Little Red Riding Hood has a budding romance with her father's young apprentice Christopher, but her overprotective father fires Chris and chases him away when he catches them kissing. He changes his mind when both his daughter and his mother are rescued by Chris from the Wolf's belly.
  • In The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers, the "haunting" of the castle turns out to have been staged by King Vladimir to get rid of his daughter's suitors.
• Call-Back: In Little Red Riding Hood, when the title character is reading a book of fairy tales, the camera zooms in on an illustration of Rapunzel in her tower. In-context, this shows that like Rapunzel, she feels overly sheltered, but it also calls back to the show's Rapunzel adaptation four episodes earlier.
• Call-Forward: In Jack and the Beanstalk, when the Giantess urges Jack to hide from her husband in the oven, Jack remarks "You know this is not Hansel and Gretel, don't you?" and she retorts "I'm an ogress, not a witch!" The show would adapt Hansel and Gretel just two episodes later.
• Camp Gay: The wizard from "Rumpelstiltskin" and the one male fairy from Sleeping Beauty.
• Carpet of Virility: The Frog Prince, because Robin Williams.
• The Chessmaster: The witch in "Rapunzel". The first scene she's in shows her bewitching Rapunzel's mother from afar, thus being the one responsible for the mother's craving for radishes. Which led to Rapunzel's father stealing them from the witch's garden, the witch catching him, and stating that she's going to take his daughter as compensation for her stolen vegetables.
• Chewing the Scenery: The Genie of the Lamp enjoys screwing around with Aladdin's head by making empty death threats every chance he gets, even though he knows he can't kill him and enjoys Aladdin's company.
• Chroma Key: Frequently used for special effects work.
• Clip Show: The "Greatest Moments" episode. (Also a Missing Episode until the second complete series DVD release.)
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander:
  • The Miller's Daughter in Rumpelstiltskin, who, even after becoming queen, skips through the castle halls like a little girl, and talks to animals.
  • Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk, who from the beginning has all sorts of wild dreams and Zany Schemes to try to lift himself and his mother out of poverty. His long-suffering mother is the Cloud Cuckoo Landers Minder.
• Cold Snap: "The Snow Queen".
• Composite Character:
  • In Jack and the Beanstalk, the old man who buys Jack's cow and the fairy who tells him the story of how the Giant killed his father are one and the same, with the man Disguised in Drag for the latter role.
  • The Pinocchio episode combines the characters of Mangiafuoco and the Coachman into the villainous Romani played by James Coburn.
  • The adaptation of The Twelve Dancing Princesses composites the twelve sisters into six, with the title changed just to The Dancing Princesses.
  • In The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers, the ghostly old man haunting the castle turns out to really be the King, who has been staging the supposed "haunting" to get rid of his daughter's suitors because he doesn't want to lose her.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • In "Rapunzel", the witch is mentioned to have died of "hardening of the heart" by the narrator. The original never mentions her fate.
  • The wicked fairy from Sleeping Beauty is also killed off when the prince throws an axe at her while she's in her One-Winged Angel form.
• Dirty Old Man: The mole in "Thumbelina" shows signs of this.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Lampshaded in Sleeping Beauty, when Henbane curses the Princess, and then makes every possible effort to stop any Prince from coming to wake her, just because the King and Queen didn't invite her to the christening and then had no golden dish dome for her plate when she arrived unexpectedly.
  The Pink Fairy: What is your problem, Henbane? One silly dish dome?
  Henbane: It's the principle of the thing!
  • An even more absurd Played Straight example in "Beauty and the Beast": Apparently the Beast was cursed because his parents didn't believe in faerie tales. (This is a lift from the 1946 film version.)
• Does Not Like Men: The witch in Rapunzel doesn't like men; she claims they lie, deceive, and "steal what's most precious from you", and says she keeps Rapunzel in the tower to protect her from them. It doesn't work.
• Downer Ending: "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", as it is a direct adaptation of the Robert Browning poem down to all the narration and dialogue being in rhyme. (A man implied to be Browning telling the poem to a young boy is the Framing Device.) This is probably why it's one of two episodes available on DVD only in the full-series set (the other being the creepy-fun "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers"), rather than any of the compilation discs — it's tough to match it with others thematically.
• Dracula: A variation in "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers": Not actually a vampire, but the sorcerer son of the original Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) played by none other than Christopher Lee himself, complete with a hunchbacked servant, and a coffin scene.
• Dramatic Thunder: As the Pied Piper prepares to spirit away the children of Hamelin, he causes the sky to cloud over and thunder to peal.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The miller's daughter from Rumpelstiltskin. Even her own father just calls her "daughter".
• Evil Chancellor: The vizier in "Aladdin" isn't the Big Bad, but he is an enemy to Aladdin because he (the Vizier) was trying to marry the princess before Aladdin showed up.
• Eye Beams: The witch in "Rapunzel" has them.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Averted in "Rapunzel" where the title character's father teaches his wife how to shoot a musket.
• Fat and Skinny: The stepsisters Arlene and Bertha in Cinderella. Ironically, it's the skinny one, Arlene, who stuffs her face with food at the ball.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Queen in Snow White. Rather than dying or being forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes, the Magic Mirror tells her that from now on she'll never be able to see her face in a mirror. Indeed, every time she looks in one of her mirrors (and she has many) from that moment on, it turns black, which causes a Villainous Breakdown.
• Femme Fatalons:
  • The witch in Rapunzel has a rather impressive set of these. She puts them to good use, clawing out the prince's eyes.
  • In Sleeping Beauty, the evil fairy Henbane sports enormous nails in her giant One-Winged Angel form, which she uses like claws to fight against the Prince.
• Fingore: In Rapunzel, the witch threatens to cut off Claude's fingers after she catches him stealing from her garden. When he tells her he was stealing for his wife's benefit, she threatens to cut off her fingers too.
• Foreshadowing: In "Rapunzel", the title character tells the Prince that the witch told her the day her hair got cut would be the worst day of her life. Indeed, when it actually happens, it's a horrible day for her.
• Framing Device: Several episodes have them; for instance, the pea in "The Princess and the Pea" is now in a modern museum — a direct reference to the ending of the original story!
• Friend to All Living Things: The Miller's Daughter from "Rumpelstiltskin". This saves the day in the end, as she ventures into the forest at night to ask her animal friends if they've seen "the little man," and the unicorn takes her to his house, where she eavesdrops and learns his name.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Tina in "The Three Little Pigs" pulls this on Buck Wolf.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Paul in "The Three Little Pigs" tells the salesman about the building material he desires for his house.
  Paul Pig: Ya see, I'm building me a house. A nice wood house. Something the ladies "wood" love, and ladies love wood. Believe me.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother both get eaten alive. After Chris cuts open the wolf's stomach, they're both completely unharmed.
• Grand Finale: Subverted by circumstance: The "Greatest Moments" Clip Show featuring performers in and out of character is actually the last episode, filmed in 1985, but due to Showtime's erratic scheduling it ended up airing midway through the broadcast run and was not made available on VHS.
• G-Rated Sex: The series as a whole does not shy away from implied sexuality, but there is one odd example in "Rapunzel" where the title character apparently manages to give birth to twins after one visit with the Prince where they merely confessed their love for each-other and made out for a bit. Although by the time the Witch finds out, Rapunzel is almost finished making the ladder to escape with the Prince, so presumably some time has passed that could have included more visits where the twins were conceived.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: A particularly great one occurs between James Earl Jones's Comedic Sociopath Genie of the Lamp and Leonard Nimoy's Evil Is Hammy Evil Magician. No scenery is left unchewed.
• Henpecked Husband:
  • Buck Wolf in "The Three Little Pigs"; the whole reason he's trying to capture one of the pigs is that his seen-but-not-heard wife Nadine demands one since a coyote couple is coming over for dinner and "They like pork!"
  • Also, Rip Van Winkle, as in the original Washington Irving story.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": In "Beauty and the Beast", her name really is "Beauty"! Her two sisters are understandably resentful.
• The Igor: Attila from The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers.
• Informed Attractiveness: Klaus Kinski as a handsome prince in "Beauty and the Beast".
• Inspiration Nod: The climax of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" manages to be both faithful to the poem and an extended Played for Drama homage to Poltergeist (1982), perhaps inspired by the fact that the nature of the Piper's music (which "tells" its targets that if they follow him they will reach their idea of Paradise) is not unlike how Carol Anne is lured to the Other Side. When the Piper enchants the children of the town to follow him, a disembodied female voice cries "He's heeeeere!" as they suddenly and obediently leave their schoolwork, etc. behind. From there, when they reach Koppleberg Hill and the portal opens in the rock, all that can be seen is a blinding white light that the Piper and the contentedly smiling children file into.
• It Will Never Catch On: Stereo, according to the royal musician in "Tale of the Frog Prince".
• Large Ham: At least one in every episode. Henbane from "Sleeping Beauty" and the Genie of the Lamp from "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp" are just two examples. The most spectacular is probably the frog played by Robin Williams.
• Laser-Guided Karma
  • In "Cinderella": Cinderella's stepfamily immediately try to weasel in on her marriage once they realize they're in-laws with the Prince. The Fairy Godmother turns them into rabbits.
  • A sad twist on this in "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" with regards to the lame boy. He never realizes it, but he was left behind as a reward for being courteous to the Piper when he first arrived.
• Little Miss Con Artist: Goldilocks from "The Three Bears". Not unlike the role her actress played in Paper Moon.
• Lost in Imitation:
  • In Sleeping Beauty, the evil fairy Henbane turns herself into a fire-breathing giant to fight the Prince at the climax, only to be slain by him, very much like Maleficent's transformation into a dragon and battle with Prince Phillip in the Disney version.
  • As in Disney's Pinocchio, this version has Pinocchio brought to life by the Blue Fairy (here named Sophia) after Geppetto wishes for a son, unlike in the book where Pinocchio is alive as soon as he's carved.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The miller's daughter gently singing her baby a lullaby over ominous background music as Rumpelstiltskin climbs through the window to claim him.
• Manipulative Bitch: Again, Goldilocks!
• Maybe Ever After: Geppetto and Sophia the Blue Fairy at the end of Pinocchio.
• Medieval European Fantasy: The setting for most episodes.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • The Pied Piper mentions dealing with vampire bats in Asia (this is a mistake carried over from the source poem).
  • In "Rumpelstiltskin" (an episode set in an ambiguous medieval European kingdom), one of the protagonist's animal friends is a raccoon.
• Ms. Fanservice: Princess Debbie in "Sleeping Beauty". Her role is fairly minor, but... well... just see for yourself.
• Mood Whiplash: Some of the lighthearted episodes can turn dead serious in a hurry. Likewise, some of the more dramatic episodes can suddenly turn goofy.
• Montage Ends the VHS: A compilation trailer previewing the whole series ended the original VHS releases. It was moved up to the start of the videos when CBS/FOX subsidiary Playhouse Video rereleased them at the end of The '80s.
• Named After Somebody Famous: The Three Little Pigs are named Peter, Paul, and Larry, punning on The '60s musical group Peter, Paul and Mary. Larry even suggests they could form a folk music group early on!
• Named by the Adaptation: Quite a few episodes invoke this as so many of the original stories went with No Name Given. For example, Rapunzel's prince is named Henry, and her parents are named Claude and Marie.
• Non Sequitur: In "The Snow Queen" an otherwise normal reindeer is apparently able to fly. This is never addressed.
• Not in Front of the Parrot!: In "Rapunzel", the title character's affair with the Prince is given away when the pet parrot starts repeating some of what they said in front of the witch.
• Not What It Looks Like: In "The Tale of the Frog Prince", when the king discovers his daughter in bed with a naked man.
• Offscreen Karma: At the end of "Rapunzel", the narrator mentions that the Witch died of "hardening of the heart".
• Parental Bonus: A lot, especially in the comedy-centric episodes. These range from the theme naming of the Three Little Pigs (see above) to cheeky anachronisms in the dialogue to occasional references to the performers' other work (Goldilocks' mother is working on a needlepoint project that reads "My life is a tapestry" — she's played by Carole King).
• Parental Favoritism: Beauty's father in "Beauty and the Beast" obviously favors the title character over his other two daughters. Why else would he name her "Beauty"?
• Pinocchio Nose: The Trope Namer appears in Pinocchio, of course. In this version, his nose grows not only when he lies, but when he does anything naughty: for example, when he spends the money Geppetto gave him for schoolbooks to see a puppet show instead.
• Played for Laughs: Quite a few episodes, such as "The Tale of the Frog Prince", "The Three Little Pigs", and "Pinocchio". In general, the simpler the original story is, the more likely it ends up played as comedy. It's also common for the adaptations of stories that prominently feature anthropomorphic animals to play up the humor.
• The Pollyanna: The miller's daughter from "Rumpelstiltskin". She has to marry a Psychopathic Manchild who threatened to kill her multiple times, but she's just happy to be alive, skipping merrily down the halls of the castle. It helps that she's played by Shelley Duvall.
• Pragmatic Villainy: This is one of the few versions of "Cinderella" where the stepmother realizes she'd still be in-laws with the Prince if Cinderella marries him. The Fairy Godmother immediately turns her and the stepsisters (temporarily) into rabbits.
• Precision F-Strike: From the first episode!
  The Princess: (when she realizes she can't get away with throwing the frog out the window) Oh, damn!
  The Frog: (a few moments later) You're very beautiful in your own bitchy way.
  • And from Little Red Riding Hood:
  Granny: (when she's rescued from the Wolf's belly) What took you so long? I damn near suffocated!
• Prince Charmless:
  • Sleeping Beauty has the prissy, snobbish and cowardly son of King Murray, to whom the princess nearly faces an Arranged Marriage. Ironically, he's played by Christopher Reeve, who doubles as the story's genuine Prince Charming a hundred years later.
  • Prince Richard in The Princess and the Pea starts out as a bit of a sulky Royal Brat, but he gets better thanks to Princess Alecia's influence.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Little Red Riding Hood's love interest, apprentice woodcutter Christopher, turns out to be the woodcutter who rescues her and Granny from the Wolf in the end.
• Race Lift: "Puss in Boots" has an all-black cast with the exception of the Farmer, who is played by John Schuck.
• Related in the Adaptation: In Villeneuve's original version of Beauty and the Beast, Beauty was the daughter of a king and a good fairy. A wicked fairy had tried to murder baby Beauty so she could marry her father, and Beauty was put in the place of the merchant's deceased daughter to protect her. In this version, as in most retellings starting with Beaumont's, this backstory is cut and Beauty is the merchant's biological daughter.
• Really 700 Years Old: The witch in "Rapunzel" claims to have been around for centuries.
• Relatively Flimsy Excuse: Inverted in "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp": the evil magician that convinces Aladdin to delve into the cave and retrieve the lamp does so by pretending to be Aladdin's long lost Uncle. Aladdin's mother calls him on it, stating that her deceased husband never mentioned having a brother, but the magician plays it off.
• Rhyming Episode: "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" save for the opening scene, which establishes the justification for it being this.
• Romantic Comedy: Two different kiddie video critics in The '80s pointed out that the Princess and the Pea adaptation, which toplines Liza Minnelli, is effectively a fairy tale version of the then-recent romantic comedy hit Arthur (1981) — not least because she was the leading lady in that too!
• The Runaway:
  • In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, when Goldilocks gets home after running from the bears' house, her father punishes her for sneaking out into the woods by making her weed the garden. So she runs away, and when she meets the bears again, she lets them think she's a poor orphan so she can live with them.
  • In the Princess and the Pea, Princess Alecia has run away from home, looking for "...I don't know... life, I suppose."
• Scenery Porn: "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp" and "Beauty and the Beast" are both prime examples of this.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: The King and Queen get one in "Sleeping Beauty".
• Show Some Leg: Princess Debbie, in her attempt to seduce the Prince in "Sleeping Beauty".
• Shout-Out:
  • In Sleeping Beauty, which takes place in Russia, the king and queen's names are Boris and Natasha, and later, this dialogue occurs:
  The Pink Fairy: Someday a prince will come.
  Henbane: You've got quite a way with words, dear heart.
  • In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Snow White's chin-length hair with a ribbon in it looks very much like the hairstyle of her Disney counterpart.
  • In The Three Little Pigs, the title characters are named Peter, Paul and Larry, and when they first leave home, Larry suggests that they form a folk music trio.
  • In the opening scene of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack and his mother have just one bean to eat, much like Mickey Mouse and his friends in Mickey and the Beanstalk.
• Sliding Scale of Adaptation Modification: Anywhere from 2 to 5 depending on the episode.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • In Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf doesn't die in the end, but is just left very uncomfortable with a stomach full of stones. (Although since he's now unable to eat, it seems unlikely that he'll live much longer.)
  • In Hansel and Gretel, the Witch's previous child victims, whose hearts she preserved in child-sized gingerbread cookies, all come back to life after the Witch is killed (a detail borrowed from the opera adaptation).
  • In The Three Little Pigs, the first two pigs escape from the Wolf, as they often do in retellings. Nor is the Wolf boiled to death, but just knocked out and delivered back to his nagging wife on a platter with an apple in his mouth.
  • In The Dancing Princesses, the princes who fail to learn the princesses' secret aren't executed, just sent back to their kingdoms.
• Spinoff:
  • Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales & Legends, which aired on Showtime from 1985-87 and alternated between American folk characters such as Johnny Appleseed and real-life figures like Annie Oakley and Ponce de Leon.
  • Nightmare Classics retold horror stories. Only four episodes were produced, covering The Turn of the Screw, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Carmilla, and The Eye of the Panther.
  • The Made-for-TV Movie Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme took a funky approach to nursery rhyme characters. Notable as the only one that didn't air on Showtime, but rather The Disney Channel.
  • Finally, Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories was an animated series with celebrity narrators that adapted popular children's picture books in a Two Shorts format.
• Standard Snippet: Also sprach Zarathustra is used in "The Tale of the Frog Prince" when the frog retrieves the ball from the well (in a shot similar to the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey no less).
• Straw Character: The mole in "Thumbelina" is a straw conservative, being a stuffy antiquarian who hates the very concept of progress.
• Tell Me About My Father:
  • In Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack's mother tells him about how wonderful his Disappeared Dad was, but she can't remember how he died. (See Trauma-Induced Amnesia below.)
  • In Hansel and Gretel, Gretel asks Hansel to tell her about their Missing Mom, since he remembers her but Gretel doesn't. He says that she was very beautiful and very kind... unlike their stepmother, who is also beautiful, but wicked.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: in Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack's mother can't remember how her husband died, because it was "too horrible." In the end, the magic harp's music reminds her: he was killed by the Giant, who stole all their money and property too, meaning that everything Jack has stolen from the Giant was rightfully theirs all along.
• Überwald: The setting of "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers" complete with variations of Dracula and Igor (see above).
• Unicorn: One shows up in "Rumpelstiltskin" (in the form of a miniature pony wearing a rubber horn).
• Video Inside, Film Outside: The scenes at and around Beauty's home in "Beauty and the Beast" are shot on film, while the scenes in the Beast's domain are shot on videotape. This is the only episode in the series that uses film at all — all other episodes are shot on video.
• Wacky Cravings: As in most versions of Rapunzel, the title character's pregnant mother has a wild craving for a vegetable from the Witch's garden, in this case for her blue-leafed radishes. This particular retelling has the Witch cast a spell on Marie to make her crave the radishes so her husband will steal them for her, allowing the Witch to claim their child for herself as the price.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Averted in "Thumbelina", which ends with the title character reuniting with her mother on the way to getting wed to the fairy prince (since she wants her to bless the union).
• Whole-Plot Reference: The "Beauty and the Beast" episode is very much a loving homage to Jean Cocteau's classic film La Belle et la Bête.
• Wicked Witch: Played straight numerous times, but averted in "The Little Mermaid". The Sea Witch is presented as a neutral party, but tries to talk Pearl out of wanting legs by describing the pain it'll bring.
• Wizard Classic: A rather flamboyant example appears in "Rumpelstiltskin".
• Women Are Wiser:
  • In Jack and the Beanstalk, apart from being easily fooled by Jack's disguises, the Giantess has normal human intelligence, while her husband the Giant is Dumb Muscle.
  • In The Princess and the Pea, Queen Veronica is the real ruler of the kingdom, while King Frederico is an idiot who just occasionally makes inane comments.
• Would Hurt a Child: Fairy tales, what do you expect? But the Witch from Hansel and Gretel earns a special place, given she eats children and bakes their heart into gingerbread. She even eats one boy offscreen.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In Sleeping Beauty, much of the humor comes from the fact that almost all the characters seem aware that they're in an Affectionate Parody of a fairy tale, but the princess and prince both think they're in a fully earnest, old-fashioned fairy tale.
• You're Not My Father: Inverted in Hansel and Gretel, where the Wicked Stepmother refuses to let Hansel and Gretel call her "Mother."

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