3 Fairy tales Tell Me a Story should consider for Season 2 and one it shouldn’t

Now that Tell Me a Story has scored a renewal, the Kevin Williamson-helmed series will need new fairy tales to reinvent come Season 2. I’ve compiled a list of tales that could use a twisted retelling.

If you’ve been loving the CBS All Access series, Tell Me a Story, as much as I have then you’ll be glad to know the show has been picked up for a second season! The series, created by The Vampire Diaries’ Kevin Williamson, reinvents classic fairy tales with a dark, modernized twist.

The debut season of Tell Me a Story featured retellings of three classics: Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, and The Three Little Pigs. Two episodes remain before the first seasons’ finale, but I’ve already begun theorizing about season two. I even came up with a few ideas for how the anthology could progress in its follow-up season.

Rapunzel

I admit I am a little inspired by Sharp Objects for this one. Rapunzel is all about a young girl being held captive by a witch, one who uses her hair to climb up and down her gilded tower hidden away from the rest of the world. In a television show like Tell Me a Story, this could easily be the story of an overprotective mother, perhaps to the point of Munchausen by proxy, as was the case in Sharp Objects. Although there are other avenues to explore too.

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I considered the life of a pageant queen with an overbearing stage mother. It has all the trappings of a Rapunzel story. They share an obsession with beauty (specifically hair) and the possibility of surrendering a normal life with friends and like-minded peers due to parental and societal pressure to be the very best and abstain from anything ill-mannered, i.e. they are kept away from the rest of the world, living in a bubble of sorts. Plus, pageants are popular in television right now: see our true crime obsession with the JonBenet Ramsey case, Netflix’s Dumplin’ or Insatiable, and Facebook’s Queen America.

An aspiring actress would work just as well, especially if the show’s setting remains New York City, or even if they move to Los Angeles. I’m envisioning a Black Swan-esque story or something just as psychologically terrifying from these writers.

Snow White

The first thing I thought of, and I don’t know what that says about me, is a cult. A woman gets wrapped up in a strange yet entrancing group of people only to discover they have sinister intentions or otherworldly beliefs. There is no reason the cult members (dwarves) need to be all men either.

Picture someone at a new job in a new city, or a young adult starting college. (We had high school drama with Kayla in season one, no reason to retread.) As for the fabled witch and her poisoned apple, that could easily be the cult leader herself and the poisoning angle has hundreds of possibilities.

Snow White also has one of the most famed, frightening sequences in children’s media. Her run through the dark wood gave me nightmares when I was young. What more fodder do you need for a television show of this nature?

Jack and the Beanstalk

Corporate espionage. What equates to a “beanstalk” in the real world? My first thought was a very tall building, which then lead me to a skyscraper, or maybe a palace, but a skyscraper seemed more in line with Tell Me a Story’s sense of realism. The “Jack” in our story uncovers a money launder scheme or some other criminal activity at his job but must face the “giant” a.k.a. the CEO, in order to expose the underbelly of his corporation.

We’re taking out the fantasy elements and replacing them with scandal, corruption, and blackmail. It could be a juicy story with some pulpy elements to make it unique and plenty of easter eggs to callback to the original fairy tale in question.

Instead of magic beans, perhaps Jack (or Jake or John, whatever they decide to name him) finds microchips or flash drives containing incriminating evidence about the true nature of the company he works for.

1 to Avoid: Cinderella

Unless the Tell Me a Story writers can think of a revolutionary take on the Cinderella story (and I’m not saying they can’t) then I’m hoping Cinderella’s clock has struck midnight for good.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a Cinderella retelling as much as the next person, I really do, but we’ve seen so many variations of this story in modern film and television. It would be nice to let other, lesser known, fairy tales get the chance to shine for a change.

What are some fairy tales you would like to see retold in the second season of Tell Me a Story? Let me know in the comments!

A new episode of Tell Me a Story will begin streaming December 20 on the CBS All Access app.