TV: The Tenth Kingdom - a trolly good show

By FIONA RAE

There are only so many stories we can tell, or so professional scriptwriters will tell you: good versus evil, hero versus villain, the journey of self-discovery. You know the sort of thing, and so, for sure, does George Lucas.

But while Lucas used up all the fairy-tale elements in Star Wars and then got bogged down in special effects, The Tenth Kingdom (TV3, 7.30pm, tonight) trips gaily through the field of archetypes and emerges as good old-fashioned entertainment.

Psychologist Carl Jung, apart from coining the phrase "There's nowt as queer as folk" (not a lot of people know that), spent quite a lot of time on symbols and archetypes. If the shock of the CGI morphing didn't kill him, he would have loved The Tenth Kingdom.

There's goodies and baddies, a false king, an evil queen, a trickster half-wolf/half-man, quite a few bumbling fools and a special child who will be the key to it all.

Along the way are plenty of familiar fairy tales, from Little Red Riding Hood to Rapunzel.

The story so far: a young woman symbolically named Virginia (Kimberly Williams) and her bumbling father, Tony (John Larroquette), are drawn into a fairy-tale dimension where there are nine kingdoms.

It seems the tales are all true - Snow White, the Ice Queen, Cinderella - the lot. But happily ever after was long ago and now the Evil Queen (Diane Wiest), a descendent of the stepmother in Snow White, is making another bid for power.

The 10th Kingdom refers to New York, which is where the rightful prince, Wendell, who has been turned into a dog, takes refuge. But the stunning title sequence, where New York turns into a fairy kingdom, is somewhat misleading: most of the action takes place back in fairy-tale land, where Virginia, Tony and Wendell are pursued by three trolls and a wolfman.

Scott Cohen, as Wolf, is a scream, as are the trolls, who are endowed with a very excellent array of prosthetic noses, teeth and ears and an amusing shoe fetish. They are quite taken with a tape deck that is playing Night Fever and describe the song to their father, Relish: "They are called the Brothers Gibb, and the song, it concerns a deadly fever that only strikes on Saturdays."

Underneath Relish, the Troll King, is Married With Children's Ed O'Neill, who is considerably smarter than his offspring but who looks likely to have a problem with another archetypal narrative element - pride coming before a fall.

To add to the familiarity, there are some modern touches, such as Virginia's voiceover at the beginning and X-Files-like location details: "Snow White Memorial Prison, 6.03 pm" appears on screen, typed, in the bottom corner. At one point, Virginia has "Troll Toy" tattooed on her tummy.

It's all good fun, if a little scary for the too-young. Where Merlin was a damp, if CGI-rich, squib, The Tenth Kingdom succeeds because it keeps it light.

If there's a problem, it's length. So far we're only a quarter of the way through, which leaves six hours to go - and that's quite a commitment in the holiday season.

For anyone who's ever heard a fairy story (like, you know, everybody), it'll be pretty clear what's coming, too. And you can bet George Lucas would approve of the ending.