Queen Elizabeth II Cup (Japan) and The Storyteller (TV series): Difference between pages
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{{see also|Storyteller}}
{{Infobox Television
| show_name = The Storyteller
| image = [[Image:StorytellerTitle.jpg|200px]]
| caption = Jim Henson's ''The Storyteller''
| genre = [[Children's drama]]
| creator = [[Jim Henson]]
| developer = [[Anthony Minghella]]
| presenter = [[John Hurt]]
| starring = John Hurt<br />[[Brian Henson]]
| voices = Brian Henson
|
| theme_music_composer = [[Rachel Portman]]
| opentheme =
| endtheme =
| country = {{UK}}<br />{{USA}}
| language = [[English language|English]]
| num_series = 2
| num_episodes = 13
| list_episodes =
| producer = [[Duncan Kenworthy]]
| executive_producer =
| ___location = [[Elstree Studios]]
| camera =
| runtime = 22 minutes
| network =
| picture_format = [[PAL]]
| audio_format = [[Stereophonic sound]]
| first_run = [[1988]]
| first_aired = 1988
| last_aired = 1989
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
| related =
| website =
| imdb_id = 0092383
| tv_com_id = 6837
}}
'''''The Storyteller''''' is a [[live-action]]/[[puppet]] [[television series]]. It was an [[United States|American]]/[[United Kingdom|British]] co-production which originally aired in [[1987]] and was created and produced by [[Jim Henson]].
The series retold various European [[fairy tale]]s, created with a combination of [[actor]]s and [[puppet]]s. The framing device had an old storyteller ([[John Hurt]]) sitting by a fire telling each tale to his talking dog (a realistic looking puppet, performed and voiced by [[Brian Henson]]). The series was scored by [[Rachel Portman]].
==Episode list==
===Series 1===
Each half-hour episode was written by [[Anthony Minghella]]. Only nine were completed:
#"[[The Soldier and Death]]"*
#"[[Fearnot]]"
#"[[The Luck Child]]"
#"[[A Story Short]]"
#"[[Hans My Hedgehog]]"
#"[[The Three Ravens]]"*
#"[[Sapsorrow]]"*
#"[[The Heartless Giant]]"*
#"[[The True Bride]]"*
<nowiki>*</nowiki> this episode first aired in the US as part of [[The Jim Henson Hour]].
===Series 2===
Henson later attempted a follow-up, ''[[The Storyteller: Greek Myths]]'', which had a different story-teller ([[Michael Gambon]]), but the same dog. The second series focused on [[Greek Mythology]], and this series took place, rather than by the storyteller's fire, in the Minotaur's [[Labyrinth]], which the new storyteller and his dog wander through.
Only four episodes of this series were made:
#"[[Daedalus]] and [[Icarus (mythology)|Icarus]]"
#"[[Orpheus]] and [[Eurydice]]"
#"[[Perseus (mythology)|Perseus]] and the [[Gorgon]]"
#"[[Theseus]] and the [[Minotaur]]"
==Episode guide==
===Series 1===
====The Soldier and Death====
From an early Russian folk tale. A soldier returns from 20 years of war with nothing but three biscuits in his sack. In his way home he encounters a beggar asking for food. Being a kind-hearted soldier he offers him a biscuit and in repay for his generosity, the beggar gives him an extraordinary ruby whistle.
Continuing his way, he finds a second beggar. The beggar plays a drum and the soldier whistles to the rhythm. A terrible dancer, the soldier nonetheless makes a good effort. After enjoying themselves, the soldier gives him his second biscuit, and the beggar gives in return the ability to dance.
Continuing his way, the soldier finds one last beggar who plays marvellous tricks with cards. Watching with great enjoyment, the soldier bursts into applause. The old beggar asks if his tricks are worth a farthing. "More," says the soldier, "but I have nothing but this biscuit." He removes it from his pocket and breaks it in two to share, but as he does he decides it is not fair to give this beggar less than the others, so he hands over the whole biscuit.
The beggar realises the soldier's heart is kind and gives him his deck of cards explaining him that with this deck, he will never ever lose a single hand of poker. Then the beggar gives him an old and ugly sack, explaining that whatever he wanted to be inside the sack, he just needs to say the name out loud and then the order "Get in the sack!".
Soon, using naught but his sack, his whistle, and his cards he must outwit devils, save a kingdom, and try to outwit death.
The Episode stars [[Bob Peck]] as the Soldier
====Fearnot====
From an early German folk tale. The Storyteller recounts the adventures of [[The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was|a boy who goes out into the world to learn what fear is]], accompanied by a dishonest but loveable tinker. He faces many dangers without learning to be afraid, only to learn that fear is at home: the fear of losing his sweetheart.
[[Reece Dinsdale]] is Fearnot, a young [[Gabrielle Anwar]] appears as his sweetheart, and [[Willie Ross]] is the Tinker.
====The Luck Child====
From an early Russian folktale. An evil king sets out to kill a 'luck child', the seventh son of a seventh son, whom it is prophesised will one day be king. The child's luck is a gift, and cannot be undone. The same is true of prophesies. And monsters...
[[Steven Mackintosh]] is the Luck Child, [[Cathryn Bradshaw]] is the Princess, [[Anthony O'Donnell]] is the Little Man and [[Robert Eddison]] is the cursed ferryman.
====A Story Short====
An adaptation of the [[stone soup]] fable, the Storyteller tells of a harsh time when he was forced to walk the land as a beggar. Finding himself in sight of the castle kitchen, he picks up a stone and fools the castle cook into helping him make soup from a stone, by adding it into a cauldron of water and slowly adding other ingredients to improve the flavour. When the cook realises he has been swindled, he asks that the Storyteller be boiled alive. The King, as a compromise, promises to give the Storyteller a gold crown for each story he tells for each day of the year- and to boil him if he fails. The Storyteller does well at first, but on the final day he awakens and can think of no story...
This is the only episode where the Storyteller himself plays a major part in the story he tells. His wife is played by [[Brenda Blethyn]], [[Bryan Pringle]] is the Cook, The King is [[Richard Vernon]], and the Beggar is [[John Kavanagh]].
====Hans My Hedgehog====
From an early German [[Hans My Hedgehog|folk tale]]. A farmer's wife drives her husband mad with her desperate measures to have a baby. She says to him that she wants a child so bad, she would not care how he looked even if he were covered in quills like a hedgehog.
That, of course, is what she gets: a baby covered in quills, as soft as feathers. His mother calls him 'Hans My Hedgehog' and she is the only one to love him; his father grows to hate him for shame. So eventually Hans leaves for a place where he can't hurt anyone and where no one can hurt him.
Deep inside the forest, for many years Hans dwells with his animals for companions. One day a king gets lost in Hans' forest and he hears a beautiful song being played on a bagpipe. He follows the music and finds Hans' castle. When Hans helps him to escape, then king promises that he will give to Hans the first thing to greet him at his castle - which the King secretly knows to be his dog. Instead, it turns out to be his beautiful daughter, the princess of sweetness and cherry pie. Hans and the king have made a deal that in exactly one year & one day his prize (the princess) shall be his.
a year and one day later Hans returns to the castle. The Princess of Sweetness and Cherry Pie says she knows what she must do. Hans asks her if she finds him ugly and she replies that he is not nearly as ugly as a broken promise. They are married, to the dismay of the entire kingdom. On their wedding night, the Princess awaits her husband in bed. He comes into the chamber with his bagpipes and takes a seat by the fire and begins to play the sam ebeautiful music that saved the King a year prior. The princess is soothed by the music and dozes off. She wakes and finds a pelt of quills as soft as feathers on the ground before the fire. She sees her husband in teh form of a handsome young man freeing the animals of the castle, to live with his friends in his forest castle. He knows she has seen when he finds her slumbering on the discarded quills the following night. He tells her that he is bewitched and only if she can keep his secret for a one more night can he be freed and remain in the form of the handsome man. She agrees.
The next morning at breakfast the Queen inquires why her daughter is so cheerful. The Princess tries to resist but as her mother pries she gives in and tells her that Hans is bewitched. The Queen says that the only way to reverse it is to fling the quills in teh fire. That night when Hans sheds his quills, she obeys her mother and burns them. She hears his screams of pain as if he were aflame and he runs from the castle. The Princess has a blacksmith make her three pairs of solid iron shoes and slips away in search of her husband. She wears the shoes to nothing and moves on to the second pair, with still no sign of Hans. When she is donning the third pair of shoes, she found a river and reclined by it, taking off the shoes and rubbing her sore feet. She caught sight of her reflection and saw that her hair had grown white. She wept bitterly for her hair and her husband, forever lost. The next day dhe came to a cottage, abandoned, covered in dust and cobwebs. then came the flapping of wings and she saw her husband whom she had so effortlessly searched for!
He toasted a glass of wine to no one, "to the beautiful woman who could not keep her promise."
She spoke to him and he became rigid and asked how she had found him. She told him. She told him all of the perils that she had faced and how she had walked the world and worn through three pairs of iron shoes. And then she flung herself into his embrace and with her confession of love and loyalty, he transformed into the handsome man, the spell lifted by her fidelity and affection.
The Princess returned to the kingdom with Hans and soon her hair grew red again and they were remarried. This wedding was joyous and grand with 40 days and 40 nights of feasting and storytelling and music and gaiety. And so the curse was broken and teh Princess won back her hedgehog.
[[Jason Carter]] is Han's Human form, [[Terence Harvey]] is the voice of Hans the Grovelhog, and [[Abigail Cruttenden]] is the Princess.
====The Three Ravens====
Based on the early German folk tale, [[The Six Swans]]. After the Queen dies, an evil witch ensnares the King, and turn his three sons into ravens to rid herself of her rivals. The princess escapes and must stay silent for three years, three months, three weeks and three days in order to break the spell. But after she meets a handsome prince, this is suddenly not so easy, for her stepmother has re-married, and to the prince's father...
[[Joely Richardson]] is the Princess, [[Miranda Richardson]] is the Witch, and [[Jonathan Pryce]] is the King.
====Sapsorrow====
This is a variant on the [[Donkeyskin]] tale, with elements of [[Cinderella]]. There is a king, there is his dead wife, and there arehis three daughter. Two are as ugly and as bad as can be, but the third, Sapsorrow, is as kind as beautiful as her sisters are not. There is also a ring, belonging to the Dead Queen, and a royal tradition that states that the girl whose finger fits the ring will become Queen; the law decrees it. What a lucky girl, you might think? Oh no...for when Princess Sapsorrow slips on her dead mother's ring for safekeeping, the King finds out and must marry her: the law decrees it. The princess goes into hiding, becoming a creature of fur and feathers helped by her forest creature friends, a creature called the Scraggletag. She lives thus for years, working in the kitchen of a handsome, but arrogant, prince. And then, there are three balls...
[[Alison Doody]] is Sapsorrow, [[Dawn French]] and [[Jennifer Saunders]] are her evil sisters, and [[James Wilby]] is the Priest.
====The Heartless Giant====
From an early German folk tale. A heartless giant, who once terrorised the land before being captured and imprisoned, is befriended by the young prince Leo who, one night, sets him free. His older brothers go after the giant to capture him, but do not return, so Leo sets off to find the giant himself. Once found, Leo decides to find the giant's heart, but this is no easy task - it sits in an egg in a duck in a well in a church in a lake in a mountain far away. No easy task indeed.
This is a variation upon the Norwegian tale [[The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body]].
[[Elliot Spiers]] is Prince Leo, [[Peter Marinker]] is the Voice of the Wolf, and [[Frederic Warder]] is the Giant.
====The True Bride====
Based on an early German folk tale, [[The True Bride]]. A Troll had a daughter, but she left straight off. So the Troll took another to replace her to wait on him hand and foot. Her name is Anja and she has no father and she has no mother, so the Troll is her other. Setting her impossible tasks, then beating her with his "contradiction stick" when she invariably fails, she wishes one day. Her wish is heard by the Thought Lion, a wondrous beast all in white, who completes her impossible tasks for her. When she finds her true love, he disappears one day, so Anja sets out to find him...in the hands of the Troll's evil daughter, the Trollop...
[[Jane Horrocks]] is Anja, [[Sean Bean]] is her True Love, [[Michael Kilgarriff]] is the Lion's voice, [[Alun Armstrong]] is the voice of the Troll, and [[Sandra Voe]] is voice of the Trollop
==Media==
The stories have been made available through a variety of media.
===VHS===
In the UK, all 9 episodes of series 1 were made available in 1989 on a set of 4 VHS tapes released by Channel 5.
In 1999 four of the stories were re-released by Columbia Tri-Star across two VHS tapes in both the UK and the US. These were "A Story Short", "The Luck Child", "The Soldier and Death" and "Sapsorrow".
===DVD===
Both series 1 and 2 are available in region 1 & 2 DVD format. They offer no extra features other than the original episodes in their original stereo format.
A more recent, Jim Henson's the Storyteller - The Definitive Collection, was released on DVD in the US in May 2006.
===Books===
Two versions of the book have been published; the text is the same but the pictures differ. The text, written as a series of short stories by Anthony Minghella, is adapted slightly to fit better the medium of "short story". One (ISBN 0-517-10761-9, Boxtree) features a photograph of the Storyteller on the cover; the illustrations within (by [[Stephen Morley]]) are the silhouettes as seen in the program, and photographic stills of the episodes alongside the text. The other version (ISBN 0-679-45311-3, Random House) has full colour hand illustrations by [[Darcy May]], depicting the stories alongside the text.
==Actors==
The first series featured many actors who went on to become famous. These include [[Jane Horrocks]] as Anya (''The True Bride''), [[Sean Bean]] as the True Bride's love, [[Mark Williams (actor)|Mark Williams]] as ''Fearnot'' 's brother, [[Alison Doody]] as ''Sapsorrow'', [[Miranda Richardson]] as the witch in ''The Three Ravens'', and [[Gabrielle Anwar]] as ''Fearnot'' 's love. Joely Richardson and Colin Farrell also got their starts in The Storyteller.
==Awards==
Series 1 was nominated for and won several awards.<ref>{{cite web | title = IMDB Awards | work = The Storyteller | publisher = IMDB | url = http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092383/awards | accessdate = 2007-03-19 }}</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Result
! Award
! Category/Recipient(s)
|-
| 1987
| '''Won'''
| [[Emmy Award]]
| ''Outstanding Children's Program''<br>[[Jim Henson]] (executive producer)<br>[[Mark Shivas]] (producer)<br><small>For episode ''Hans My Hedgehog''.</small>
|-
| 1988
| '''Nominated'''
| Emmy Award
| ''Outstanding Children's Program''<br>Jim Henson (executive producer)<br>[[Duncan Kenworthy]] (producer)<br><small>For episode ''A Story Short''.</small>
|-
| 1988
| '''Nominated'''
| Emmy Award
| ''Outstanding Children's Program''<br>Jim Henson (executive producer)<br>Duncan Kenworthy (producer)<br><small>For episode ''The Luckchild''.</small>
|-
| 1989
| '''Won'''
| [[British Academy Television Awards|BAFTA TV Award]]
| ''Best Children's Programme (Entertainment/Drama)''<br>Duncan Kenworthy
|-
| 1989
| '''Won'''
| BAFTA TV Award
| ''Best Costume Design''<br>[[Ann Hollowood]]
|-
| 1989
| '''Nominated'''
| BAFTA TV Award
| ''Best Make Up''<br>[[Sally Sutton]]
|}
==Trivia==
*Series 1 was filmed at [[Elstree Studios]] in [[England]].
*''Sapsorrow'' featured the comedy duo [[French and Saunders]] as the bad sisters.
*The three "sun, moon and stars" dresses scene used as part of the ''Sapsorrow'' tale is actually from the original [[Brothers Grimm]] version of [[The True Bride]].
*The number 3 appears as significant in every episode, in keeping with tradition in old [[Indo-European studies|Indo-European]] based folktales.
==References==
<references />
==External links==
* {{imdb title|id=0092383|title=The Storyteller}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Storyteller, The}}
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