Sechs auf einen Streich (Six with one Blow, 2007—) is a German live-action TV series of fairytale adaptations, shown on Das Erste Deutsche Fernsehen. The seasons air yearly during Christmastime. The first season consisted of six episodes (hence the title). Initially concentrating on stories by The Brothers Grimm, the series has now adapted other authors too. Currently the show has thirteen seasons and 51 episodes, with the fourteenth season due December 2021.
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Tropes common to the entire series
- Adaptation Expansion: Since many fairytales involved are several pages long, it’s inevitable.
- Named by the Adaptation: In most cases.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: In defiance of
Strangled by the Red String. Every couple gets at least some moments that show their relationship actually progressing.
Tropes present in Season 1
Tischlein deck dich
Based on The Brothers Grimm's tale The Wishing-Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the SackBrüderchen und Schwesterchen
Based on Brother and Sister.- Abhorrent Admirer: The evil ugly stepsister is genuinely attracted to the king himself more than to his title and wealth.
- Adaptational Villainy: The stepmother cold-heartedly poisons the children’s father to inherit his money.
- Bait the Dog: In the beginning, the stepsister plays happily with the main characters and the stepmother is sweet and loving towards them. Just as one begins to think this will be an Adaptational Heroism adaptation and someone else would be the villain... Adaptational Villainy above ensues.
- Calling the Old Man Out: The stepsister, at one point, bitterly tells the stepmother that someone so skilled in curses and potions could have found the time to make their own daughter prettier.
- Love at First Sight: Played straight by the king and defied by the Sister. She tells him right away she has to know him better before agreeing to marry him.
Der Froschkönig
Based on The Frog PrinceKönig Drosselbart
Based on King Thrushbeard.- Adaptational Karma: Downplayed. When Isabella learns her husband has tricked her, she gives him a good slap. They reconcile quite soon, of course.
- Break the Haughty: The whole premise of Richard’s plan is to get Isabella to be more humble and see beyond appearances.
- Canon Foreigner: Thrushbeard’s father, Ottokar, and sister, Maximiliane.
- Tomboy Princess: Maximiliane walks around in a man’s clothing and practices fencing with her brother.
- Young Love Versus Old Hate: The adaptation gives the couple another set of problems in making their fathers each other’s enemies.
Frau Holle
Based on Mother Hulda. It borrows some traits from the 1977 German adaptation.- Adaptational Attractiveness: Luise is very pretty.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Subverted with Luise, whose beauty, if anything, only contributes to her lazy and vain character. Double Subverted in the end: Frau Holle pours pitch over her, and as she repents, with every good deed a bit of the pitch vanishes.
- Heel–Face Turn: Luise reforms in the end, thanks to Frau Holle.
- Parental Favoritism: The mother favors and spoils her younger daughter.
- Related in the Adaptation: Marie is living with her birth mother and full-blood sister, rather than stepmother and stepsister.
Das tapfere Schneiderlein
Based on The Brave Little Tailor Tropes present in Season 2
Schneewittchen
Based on Snow White- Death by Adaptation: The original tale never mentions Snow White's father the King again after he remarries. In this version, he has a heart attack from the shock of his daughter's disappearance and dies.
- Dies Wide Open: Snow White, after she eats the poisoned apple.
- King Incognito: The Prince first appears in disguise working as a servant to the Huntsman, because he wants Snow White to love him for who he is.
- Spared by the Adaptation: The Queen isn't killed in the end, but simply banished by Snow White, who refuses to execute her because she doesn't want to be like her.
Rapunzel
Based on RapunzelDer gestiefelte Kater
Based on Puss in BootsDornröschen
Based on Sleeping Beauty.- Adaptational Heroism: The witch of all people. Rather than being a witch, she is the Fate Fairy, and while she does curse the princess, she is later shown reacting calmly and with an approving smile to the curse being lifted.
- Purple Is Powerful: The Fate Fairy, when not in disguise, wears a magnificent purple dress.
Die Gänsemagd
Based on The Goose Girl.- Demoted to Extra: The King has a much reduced role, with most of his important actions going to the Prince and Conrad instead.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Narrowly averted. As in the original story, Magdalena falls for the Original Position Fallacy and inadvertently gets herself sentenced to a gruesome demise. However, Elisabeth intervenes at the last minute and provides a more merciful punishment for Magdalena.
Rumpelstilzchen
Based on Rumpelstiltskin.- Decomposite Character: The original king. Now it’s the old king who demands the gold and his son who marries the heroine.
- Heel–Face Turn: The king becomes much nicer in the end and befriends the miller.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Trying to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name, Lisa gathers an enormous collection of male names from across the land (and beyond, since John, Paul, George and Ringo somehow find their way to the list). And she gives all of them to her son. She’s still saying his full name when the credits finish rolling.
Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten
Based on The Bremen Town MusiciansDie kluge Bauerntochter
Based on The Brothers Grimm's tale The Peasant's Wise Daughter Tropes present in Season 3
Das blaue Licht
Based on The Blue Light (a version of The Tinder Box).- Adaptational Heroism: The soldier has been mistreated by the king and merely wants to teach him a lesson by temporarily stealing whatever the king values most. He doesn't foresee that it turns out to be the king's daughter; and instead of abusing her like in the original, he treats her in a friendly and gentle way, so that she asks to be brought to him again.
Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse
Der Meisterdieb
Des Kaisers neue Kleider
Tropes present in Season 4
Jorinde und Joringel
Based on Jorinde and JoringelAschenputtel
Based on The Brothers Grimm's version of Cinderella- Adapted Out: The second stepsister. Here there's only one, Annabella.
- Anti Interference Lockup: When Prince Viktor arrives with the slipper, the Stepmother locks Aschenputtel in the cellar, but her friend Johanna lets her out just in time.
- Death by Adaptation: Aschenputtel's father is alive and prominent in the Grimms' tale; here, as in most other Cinderella retellings, he's dead.
- Disguised in Drag: One of the young "ladies" trying to ensnare Prince Viktor at the ball is clearly a young man in a wig, dress, and heavy makeup.
- Lighter and Softer: The stepfamily's eyes aren't pecked out by doves in the end. They're just abandoned by all their farm workers, who head off to the palace with Aschenputtel and the Prince. Stepsister Annabella still has her toe cut off to make the slipper fit, though.
- Meet Cute: Aschenputtel and Prince Viktor meet twice in the woods before the ball, without her realizing his identity. Both meetings are comical: the first one involves a runaway litter of piglets and an ill-placed mud puddle, while the second features a spilled sack of flour that makes them both sneeze repeatedly, and both meetings have plenty of banter between the two lovers-to-be.
Die Sterntaler
Based on The Star MoneyDie zertanzen Schuhe
Based on The Twelve Dancing Princesses Tropes present in Season 5
Rotkäppchen
Based on Little Red Riding HoodSchneeweisschen und Rosenrot
Based on Snow-White and Rose-Red.- Adaptational Villainy: The dwarf, apart from turning the prince into a bear and being a jerk to the girls, is also interested in stealing the royal treasure.
- And the Adventure Continues: While Snow-White has the traditional Happily Ever After royal wedding, Rose-Red and Kasper ride away to see the world.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: It's not specified why the girls have a Disappeared Dad in the original. Here, he is killed in the Thirty Years' War.
- Rebel Prince: Kasper, who falls in love with Rose-Red, is considered the black sheep of the family for his adventurous nature and dislike of court life.
- Related Differently in the Adaptation: While the sisters' husbands are brothers in the original tale, here they are cousins.
Hänsel und Gretel
Based on Hansel and Gretel.- Adaptational Attractiveness: The witch, an old hag in the story, is young and very beautiful. Even after her true colors get revealed and she turns out to be uglier, she is still in no way a hag.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Unlike in the original fairytale where both children fall for her trick, Hänsel mistrusts the witch from the start and only reluctantly goes inside the gingerbread house after Gretel (who is completely taken in) goes there first.
- Ascended Extra: The father does practically nothing in the original. Here, he actively searches for the children and gets a romantic subplot with Canon Foreigner Marie.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Gretel is kind to the witch’s sentient chair (after she discovers it is sentient), and the chair helps her fight the witch.
- Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: A non-romantic example with the more moody and aloof Hänsel and the sweet and cheerful Gretel.
- Evil Twin: The witch to Marie the forest fairy.
- Face–Heel Turn: Happened long ago to the witch, courtesy of her parents.
- Freudian Excuse: The witch was left by her parents in the woods. Downplayed, since her sister suffered the same fate and nevertheless hasn’t grown evil.
- Good Stepmother: The ending implies Marie is soon to become one to Hänsel and Gretel.
- History Repeats: Many years ago, Marie and her sister have been abandoned by their parents in the forest.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Marie and the witch each have one in the form of a goose.
- Not His Sled: The witch doesn’t fall for Gretel’s “how does one bend towards the oven” trick.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Instead of dying, the Wicked Stepmother simply leaves her husband.
Allerleirauh
Based on All-Kind-of-Furs, The Brothers Grimm's version of Donkeyskin Tropes present in Season 6
Vom Fischer und seine Frau
Based on The Fisherman and His WifeDas Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern
Based on The Little Match GirlDie kleine Meerjungfrau
Based on The Little Mermaid- Adaptational Alternate Ending: The little mermaid Undine doesn't die in the end. It turns out that the witch only made her believe she would die if the prince married another as a Secret Test of Character: by refusing to kill the prince even to save her own life, she proves that she already has a soul. So she remains human, gets her voice back, and sets out to explore the world.
Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren
Based on The Brothers Grimm's tale The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs Tropes present in Season 7
Siebenschön
Based on a tale by Ludwig Bechstein from his Deutsches Märchenbuch collection.Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt
Based on How The Six Made Their Way In The WorldDie drei Federn
Based on the Grimm's tale The Three FeathersVon einem, der auszog, das Fürchten zu lernen
Based on The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was Tropes present in Season 8
Die Salzprinzessen
Based on the Grimm's tale Princess Mouseskin and other tales of the "Love Like Salt" typeNussknacker und Mausekönig
Based on The Nutcracker and the Mouse KingPrinzessin Maleen
Based on Maid MaleenDer Prinz in Bärenfall
Based on Bearskin Tropes present in Season 9
Prinz Himmelblau und Fee Lupine
Based on a tale by Christoph Wieland from his Dschinnistan collection.- Creepy High-Pitched Voice: The witch’s voice is shrill and squeaky.
- My Beloved Smother: The queen tries to have her son under her constant control and is convinced she is only acting for his own sake.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The queen realizes her mistakes when the witch nearly kills Himmelblau.
- White Hair, Black Heart: The witch looks like a young woman with long blond hair.
Das singende, klingende Bäumchen
Based on several fairytale motives from stories by the Brothers Grimm and the infamous German film of the same name.- Bait-and-Switch: Just when one might think the princess has finally had a Heel Realization… she sobs she is just sad she hasn’t got the singing tree.
- Engagement Challenge: The princess issues one to the prince, ordering him to bring her a singing, jingling tree (she gets that idea from her music box’s design). Even her father thinks it absurd and says she should be content with simply a pretty-looking ordinary tree.
- Heel–Face Turn: The princess, from a haughty Royal Brat to compassionate and loving.
Das Märchen von Schlaraffenland
Based on The Brothers Grimm and Ludwig Bechstein's The Tale of CockaigneHans im Glück
Based on the Grimm's tale Hans in Luck Tropes present in Season 10
Das Wasser des Lebens
Based on the Grimm's tale The Water of LifeDer Schweinehirt
Based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Swineherd Tropes present in Season 11
Das Märchen von die Regentrude
Based on Theodor Storm's The Rain MaidenDie Galoschen von Glücks
Based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Galoshes of Fortune Tropes present in Season 12
Die drei Königskinder
Based on The Three Royal Children by Johann Wilhelm Wolf and Wilhelm Busch.Das Märchen von den zwölf Monaten
Based on the tale of The Twelve Months Tropes present in Season 13
