Tell Me a Story: Hope

"The world's most beloved fairy tales re-imagined as a dark and twisted psychological thriller. Set in modern day New York City, the first season of this serialised drama interweaves The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel into an epic and subversive tale of love, loss, greed, revenge and murder." - TV Calendar.

I assumed, based on the description, that I was in for some kind of teen supernatural action romance. Something like Lost Girl or Wynonna Earp. Probably everyone would look like normal humans most of the time because of budget and there'd be a lot of love triangles and misunderstandings. This show is not that at all. I'm not sure what it is.

Oh, I see what it is. Edgy as fuck.

First up we meet two of the three little pigs. Who are just three dudes. Who are planning to wear pig masks to commit a robbery. We'll actually see them commit the robbery later and it's going to tie into some of the other stories, but (and this is going to be a recurring theme) it's not clear how their story is a re-imagining of the three little pigs. The three little pigs built houses to protect themselves from the wolf. I don't recall them stealing anything.

The masks also seem pretty impractical.

Next we've got Little Red Riding Hood. You can tell she's Little Red Riding Hood because her grandmother offers her a bright red raincoat, which she refuses to wear. Because, subversive? I don't know. She seems to be in highschool, and she and her father have just moved in with his mother, because of reasons.

Wear this! It's symbolic of... something!

LRRH also has a tattoo of a wolf. Wait, is she the wolf? Is she the same wolf as the one who's going to be the antagonist to the pigs? Are there multiple wolves? Or is the tattoo a complete red herring? Does anything mean anything in this show?She sneaks out and goes clubbing with her new friend, before ditching her friend to go home with some guy who, it later turns out, is one of her teachers.

Do you get it? Wolves. Because of fairy tales. I don't get it.

Next we've got Hansel and Gretel. Gretel's a personal trainer who used to be in the military and now is missing a leg and has some scars on her back. The sort of scars that look really dramatic but are easily concealed by ordinary clothes so they don't have to bother showing them very often. She also gets filmed from the waist up a lot. I think she also knows LRRH's dad, but it could have been some other dude because everyone in this show looks exactly the same. I honestly cannot tell who anyone is half the time.

I'm not sure it even matters who this man is. It's not like I know what's going on anyway.

Hansel is a gay stripper. He and his... boyfriend? Friend? Roommate? Coworker? I don't even know. They get hired to do drugs and have sex with some guy in a hotel. Not-Hansel tries to rob him but gets caught, there's an altercation, and the hotel guy gets knocked down, hits heas head on a table and dies. Hansel panics and calls Gretel, and the two of them do their best to get rid of any fingerprints and then leave.

I don't know why he looks happy about it in this screenshot, he was actually not happy at all.

Then there's the Guy Who Wants to Get Married and the Woman Who Doesn't (Except Actually She Does). They don't seem to be linked to any fairy tale as far as I can tell. Throughout most of the episode their primary drama seemed to be that he wants to get married and have kids but she thinks the world is shit and life is shit and everything is shit and she doesn't want anything. But then she changes her mind and proposes to him in front of a jewellery shop.

Is he the wolf? Is she the witch?

But then as they're shopping for engagement rings the three little pigs show up to rob the place. So that links this couple to the pigs, at least, but I'm not sure why any of this is happening. Anyway, she gets shot in the chaos and is maybe dead? That seems appropriately tragic, but it wasn't clear and I wouldn't be surprised if the next episode starts with her in the hospital.

Why are the three little pigs robbing a jewellery shop?

And now I've got to keep watching just to work out what this show is even supposed to be. How are the fairy tales relevant to any of this? How did you get from fairy tales to whatever this is? Is this one of those cases where a concept passed through so many hands that by the end it was something completely different but with vestigial traces of the original idea still hanging on despite no longer making any sense? I wouldn't be surprised if the whole show just quietly vanishes after, like episode three. It seems like the sort of thing that's destined for early cancellation.

There's a lot of nudity in this show, but all very carefully framed so as to not show anything.

Loss >>