Once Upon A Time: First Look

I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t been looking forward to the premier of this show. I think it began when I heard that Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz had created it. They were involved in the writing team for Lost, in my opinion one of the greatest shows ever conceived. The premise also excited me. It deals with fairy tales and the unknown stories attached to the likes of Cinderella, Snow White, Pinocchio, etc. It also stars Jennifer Morrison who is better known for her portrayal of Cameron in House. These things all served to give me the kind of excitement that was normally reserved for a new season of Lost.

     The premise is that in the fairy tale world the evil queen has unleashed a curse. Basically all of the fairy tale characters have been transported to a place in our world called Storybrooke where there are “no more happy endings”. The thing is that none of the characters remember who they were. How do we find out all of this? By a mysterious ten year old called Henry. He is a resident of Storybrooke who runs away from home to look for his birth mother, Emma Swan (Jennifer Goodwin). She had him adopted when he was still a baby. Of course it isn’t as simple as all that and we soon find that Emma Swan is linked with Storybrooke in that she is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming.

     Throughout the pilot we switch between the fairy tale world and the real world much as in Lost we switched to the flashbacks. Through the fairy-tale sequences we see what happened before the curse and we get to see some of the fairy tale characters we know and love. Snow White, Prince Charming, The Evil Queen, Geppetto and Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket, Granny (of red riding hood fame), Rumpelstiltskin and The Seven Dwarves are just some I spotted. Robert Carlyle in particular impressed for his portrayal of Rumpelstiltskin. The fairy tale world is beautiful, full of snowy peaks, vast forests and sparkling lakes. It is kind of what you would expect from a world inhabited by the likes of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. I guess that’s one of the geniuses of the show as it cuts between this world and the real world these characters now inhabit. Another of the geniuses is the characters these fairy tale characters now are. Jiminy Cricket ( served as Pinocchio's conscience ) is a shrink in modern day Storybrooke. Rumpelstiltskin is the owner of StoryBrooke and carries the name Gold. Granny owns the towns bed and breakfast and lives with a Goth tearaway called Ruby (Red Riding Hood). The Evil Queen is also a resident in StoryBrooke. She is the towns mayor and adoptive mother to Harry.

     The show has all the hallmarks of Lost on it, from it’s mystery to it’s structure. It also has one or two Lost references. The StoryBrooke town clock is stuck on 8:15 (the flight number of the crashed plane in Lost). Emma Swans apartment number is 108 (the number from the hatch in Lost). The curse spreads across the fairy tale world in the form of black smoke (surely a reference to the smoke monster in Lost). I have been looking out for a replacement for Lost, a show that would give me the same tingling before I watched a new episode. Could this be it? Not yet, although it is a contender. The pilot was really good and it kept me watching. I loved so many different things about it and I’ll definitely be sticking with it. I’ve been watching a lot of the shows on Americas Autumn schedule recently and this is the best one so far.

     Unfortunately, as of writing, it hasn’t been picked up by a UK broadcaster. That is surely only a matter of time though and when it does, watch it, you won’t be disappointed.