Modern twists on three classic fairytales (Hansel & Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Three Little Pigs) unfold on Kevin Williamson’s Tell Me A Story, which is currently available for streaming on CBS All Access.
I could not have been more interested in Tell Me A Story, which reunited former Vampire Diaries co-showrunner, Kevin Williamson and star Paul Wesley.
As a former hardcore Vampire Diaries fan (I had a Twitter account dedicated to the show, but we’re going to pretend that didn’t happen), the reunion intrigued me just as much as the show’s premise.
Darker than ABC’s late Once Upon a Time (and less magical, too), Tell Me A Story doesn’t focus much on the fairytale aspect of it all.
Sure, the characters are supposed to resemble those of their respective fairytales, or at least have roughly the same character layout. For example, it wouldn’t be Little Red Riding Hood without her grandmother, would it?
However, it stops there. What follows is a twisted thrill ride through the lives of these characters in New York City.
From the end of the very first episode of Tell Me A Story, I was hooked.
Setting everything up for the following episodes wasn’t necessarily the most riveting, but after episode 1, the remaining episodes have all flown by. With only the season finale left at the time of writing this, I can truly say that Tell Me A Story is the best new show of 2018.
Considering the competition, and with how much I loved Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which is much more in my niche, believe me that this is high praise.
The most interesting part of the show is definitely the story of Kayla, the show’s teen Red Riding Hood. Would I have said this after episode 1? Definitely not.
However, as the stories have progressed, the threads of Kayla’s life have produced the most entertaining, nail-biting, and interesting content.
Having Danielle Campbell (The Originals) and Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) play off of each other isn’t any small thing, either. These two can do and have done some serious work, and the finale promises even more jaw-dropping moments for this grandmother/granddaughter pair.
However, Paul Wesley’s performance as Eddie could not have been further from the famous Stefan Salvatore and his hero hair.
Eddie, a pathetic mess that works as a bartender at the central club location in the show, makes a few poor choices that lead him to a future nobody would want for themselves.
Eddie plays into the Three Little Pigs story, but their “Big Bad Wolf” is someone relatively unexpected.
The writing on Tell Me A Story is phenomenal and will remind you, rather quickly, that Kevin Williamson is one of the best minds in Hollywood.
The lives of Kayla, Eddie, Jordan, Hannah, and Gabe are seemingly separate for most of the season.
However, the three stories have slowly mixed together in the end to cross the barriers and introduce characters from other stories into another, leaving the audience shocked after being played for so long.
Being on CBS All Access, the CBS streaming site, is a positive, too. Although the series isn’t available to stream all at once (new episodes every Thursday, so catch up now!), the wait is worth it and provides more time to wrap your mind around what is going on.
Additionally, the censors on broadcast television are gone, so the show can be much more free with language, nudity, and everything else that makes a Netflix show much more realistic.
What really makes the series stand out is the storytelling.
The plot is so well put together, the twists are actually shocking and make sense, and the threads all come together with the stories all intertwined in one way or another.
Where many shows fail, this one succeeds by introducing characters that break away from the regular, overdone tropes in television.
Nobody is what they seem to be on Tell Me A Story, which is beyond wonderful to watch.
Tell Me A Story is set to be an anthology series, like American Horror Story, so the stories of the season will be wrapped up by the finale and then the show will move on to other fairytales and characters. At least, that’s what has been promised.
Also, Tell Me A Story has been renewed for season 2, so what are you waiting for? Get to watching!
The Tell Me A Story season finale is available for streaming on Thursday, January 3.
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