When Does The Storyteller Season 2 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

What is The Storyteller about?

John Hurt sits in a candlelit room beside a wheezing, sarcastic dog and tells stories. That's the entire premise of The Storyteller, and it shouldn't work as well as it does. The show adapts folklore and fairy tales, the kind with teeth in them, the kind where people get punished and consequences linger. Hurt's voice carries the weight of someone who has lived through these tales. If you want your children to encounter real stories instead of sanitized versions, this is the show to give them.

What makes it distinctive is the production design and the narrator's relationship with his dog. The sets are deliberately theatrical, built from wood and cloth and practical effects. They don't pretend to look naturalistic. The dog interrupts, comments, complains about the stories being told, and Hurt responds with the patience of someone who has been telling stories since before his companion was born. Their chemistry creates a frame around each tale that's warm without being cuddly. You're not watching a children's show that condescends to children. You're watching a craftsman at work.

The critical response was strong, and IMDb users rate it highly, but the show lasted only nine episodes before NBC cancelled it. It deserved longer, though there's something fitting about leaving viewers wanting more. The Storyteller landed at a moment when Jim Henson's company was still experimenting with what television could do with puppets and practical craft, before those techniques became a standard feature of his empire. It sits apart from most children's programming because it trusts that children can sit with darkness, ambiguity, and the strange logic of folk narratives without needing reassurance.

What lingers is how much the show respects its source material. Each tale gets time to breathe, and the production values match the importance of the story being told. The dog's asides prevent any of this from becoming reverent or dull. It's a brief, strange thing that never found its audience during its original run but has aged into something worth seeking out.

Created by Jim Henson

Is The Storyteller renewed or cancelled?

Why did The Storyteller end?

The Storyteller arrived on NBC in May 1988 with considerable promise. The show, created by Anthony Minghella, had a strong premise and impressive execution that earned it an 8.8 rating on IMDb. Yet despite critical appeal, it lasted only nine episodes across a single summer run before disappearing from the schedule. The network simply did not see the audience size it needed to justify continuing the series.

Summer television in the 1980s was a different beast than prime time, and The Storyteller found itself in a slot where it could not build the viewership NBC wanted. The show ran from May through July, a short window that made it difficult to find and hold an audience, especially for a show that required attention and investment in its storytelling. Without the momentum of a full fall season to establish itself or the chance to be discovered through word of mouth, the series ended after those nine episodes. It was not a failure of quality but of timing and television economics—a good show that arrived in the wrong place at the wrong moment.

The Storyteller Season 2 Release Date

Best & worst episodes

The Storyteller seasons

The Storyteller trailer

Where to watch The Storyteller

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