Watching it was like being trapped in F.A.O. Henson experimented with this sort of fantasy in his feature-length film "Labyrinth," but that seemed too heavy a dose. The level of craftsmanship is tremendously impressive, but the important thing is, one gets so wrapped up in the story that the trappings can be taken for granted. Rachel Portman's music is one of many production details that seem just right. Hurt is just the fellow to spin wondrous tales, and director Steve Barron, who did the classic a-ha video "Take on Me," has a happy knack for magic. The answer to his dilemma may lie back home and may have something to do with the angelic maiden Lidia (Gabrielle Anwar), whom he has glimpsed from afar. In a definitively foreboding castle lives a demon who arrives through the fireplace in sections, leading him to quote another mythical creature, Ronald Reagan, in "King's Row": "Where's the rest of me?" Soon Fearnot is bowling with a human skull and dodging the demon's sinister assaults yet still fearing not. The last we see of the monster, he is heading for Ireland to track down the bird who inspired young Fearnot's soothing tune. A wily Irish tinker (Willie Ross) enlists in the project.īut not even the omnivorous monster who lives at the bottom of a pond (specifically, "a pond by a hedge by a field by a mill by a town") can intimidate Fearnot, who charms the beast with a serenade from his violin. Our hero, played with stalwart ingenuousness by Reece Dinsdale, is unable to summon up so much as a goose pimple, no matter how hard the world works at scaring him. Henson mingles live actors with awe-inspiring creations from his creature factory, sets them all against surreal storybook backgrounds and frames the tales with sundry annotations by the storyteller himself: actor John Hurt under the proverbial ton of makeup.Īnthony Minghella adapted "Fearnot" from an old German folk tale. It has the potential to bring them all together in front of the same TV set for a change.Ĭute Muppety elements are few. It's the kind of program that does not separate the men from the boys, or the women from the girls. "Storyteller" follows "ALF" at 8:30 on Channel 4. The second, tonight on NBC, is called "Fearnot" after its title character, a lad who has never experienced a good case of the shudders, and so sallies forth to get one. The first "Storyteller" special, "Hans: My Hedgehog," aired last season. They're so seductively imaginative that you can almost feel them pulling you out of your living room and into the bottomless tube. Jim Henson's "Storyteller" fantasies turn the television screen into Alice's looking glass, Snow White's magic mirror and the thief of Bagdad's all-seeing eye.
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