"Once Upon a Time's" a hit in its early going. "Grimm" showed life in the dead zone that's Friday night.
But fairy tales aren't police procedurals. They don't have a prime-time track record. Not a good one, anyway.
They might even be cursed.
If you were to count all the long-running fairy-tale series on your fingers, you'd have plenty of free digits, even if you counted Linda Hamilton's "Beauty and the Beast"—a few times.
Prior to this fall, prime-time's last major attempt at a fairy tale was "Pushing Daisies," which died of low ratings in 2009.
But things may be changing.
Coming off a big premiere, "Once Upon a Time" held steady on Sunday night, scoring 11.7 million viewers, and snaring enough 18-to-49-year-olds to finish 17th in Nielsen's weekly demo standings.
In its debut in a no-win time slot that put in not only on a Friday, but pitted it against Game 7 of the World Series, "Grimm" didn't lose. It managed 6.6 million viewers, and wound up as NBC's second-biggest series in the weekly demo after "The Office."
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Time will tell if "Once Upon a Time" and "Grimm" are built to last, but the present's promising.
And that's more than the "happily ever after" genre usually gets.
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