The Wonderful, Bygone World of Fairytale TV

Every installment of Faerie Tale Theatre, a candy-floss fantasy series from the '80s, comes with a promise: You're always going to see screen presence legend Shelley Duvall, and you're going to see hammy acting. The premise is this: Each episode, Duvall takes on a different fairytale, sometimes even playing a character herself, and guides the viewer through tales of magic and might. Coated with a fuzzy layer of familiarity, the series is a showcase for Duvall and her fittingly elfin features. (In fact, the show is sometimes known as Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theater.) The show, which ran from 1982 to 1987, makes use of elaborate-yet-inexpensive costumes, over-the-top performances, and painted sets, trapping it in an amber of quasi-theater. But perhaps the most fantastical thing about Faerie Tale Theater is that it's not the only one of its kind. A very similar atmosphere hangs over Jim Henson's own '80s television series The StoryTeller. Hosted by a mysterious, prosthetically-enhanced storyteller, the series presents obscure European tales through the use of puppets and other Henson magic. Part of an '80s fantasy wave — demonstrated on the silver screen through favorites like Willow and The Princess Bride — both shows represent a certain bygone flavor of American television, colorful and deliberate. Soft fantasy television may be past its prime, but its world is as alluring as ever.