We're through with all the funny science fiction jokes, and on to an episode of The Storyteller. This show was another of Jim's less profitable experiments -- NBC ordered nine episodes and only aired four of them, from October 1987 till April 1988. So Jim had five more of them in the can, with the rights presumably tied up by NBC. He included The Storyteller in his pitch for TJHH, and five of the twelve episodes included the remainder of those shows. (Should TJHH have been renewed, I hope there would've been more Storyteller episodes made, three years after the first batch. Of course, if the show had been renewed, Jim wouldn't have lasted long into the second season... and now I'm sad again.)
All the Storyteller shows were written by Oscar-winner Anthony Minghella, and this particular one was directed by the fella here who's not a heartless giant:
The credits claim this comes from an early German folktale. I'm no folktale expert, but I can't find a German version of this story -- here's a Norse one which is particularly close, and you can get the Kindle version of that whole book for free here. Also, the hiding place for the heart is similar to that of Koschei The Deathless, a Russian legend (not the Hellboy character).
But neither of those stories contain the elements of betrayal and potential for redemption -- are those Minghella's? I can certainly see the redemption part of the story coming from Jim - it feels like so many other stories he captained, from Hoggle's to the deepening and humanization of the Gorgs.
Jim claims in his intro that these stories will have "the visual punch and pace of today's music videos." I certainly love the stylized feel of the visual storytelling, but I'm also very glad these aren't cut with the pace of music videos. There are plenty of lengthy shots, and the storytelling feels expansive, never choppy.
Like everything else Jim was excited about, the puppetry techniques were cutting-edge, and his Creature Shop builders were at the top of their form. The bird with the broken wing looks very real indeed, and if this wolf is less than believable, well, it's good enough for its five minutes of screentime.
The quality of the effects appears lacking to us now, 25 years later, but they're certainly the best they could be for television at that time.
I like The Storyteller as a series, but I very rarely love it (the most notable exception for me personally is the third one, "A Story Short," where the Storyteller appears in his own story). I like a lot of Jim's explorations of adult fantasy, but sometimes this show feels less special and almost formulaic. I also wish the Jim Henson Hour episodes' themes-of-note had more to do with the Storyteller shows paired with them -- this has nothing to do with science fiction or outer space ("The Soldier and Death" feels like a better choice, but I'm just some guy sitting in front of a computer second-guessing a genius).
On our next episode, Ted Danson does something to do with Oceans.
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