Will NBC’s Grimm Suffer a Fate that is Exactly That?

In our view, things aren’t looking promising for NBC’s upcoming series Grimm. The show, which it is fair to say was inspired by rather than based on the fairy tales by the eponymous Brothers Grimm, will chronicle the cases of Detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) and his partner Lieutenant Hank Griffin (Russell Hornsby). But it will also be fantastical.

Burkhardt apparently finds out he is a descendant of those Grimms and can see mystical creatures. Hence, Grimm sounds like an odd combination of fantasy and cop show. But what is it really? Worryingly, even its principals don’t seem to be sure.

“It takes the police procedural and kind of turns it on its head,” executive producer David Greenwalt told the press at the Television Critics Association on Monday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “And it takes the storybook fairy tales and fractures that.”

OK, so audiences should look forward to a cross between Sanctuary and C.S.I.? Maybe.

“It is odd,” executive producer Todd Milliner said. “There’s a lot of movies and shows about fairy tales, but ours is so not about the fairy tale. It’s a police procedural with a hint of fairy tale.”

So less of the Sanctuary, then? Apparently episodes will be based on “The Three Little Pigs,” “Cinderella” and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” so it’s hard to see how it will not be at least as quirky as its stablemate at Syfy.

The big question is will viewers buy it? Well, the history of fantasy TV on mainstream networks is not a happy one. And as much as we love shows that don’t have a conventional identity, they don’t tend to last long (Pushing Daisies being a case in point). Furthermore, it’s hard to imagine audiences will get a grip on the identity of a show when the people making it don’t seem to be sure what they’ve got themselves into.

Our prediction is then that on the limited evidence available so far, Grimm won’t have a fairy tale ending. It debuts on NBC on October 21 at 9/8c.