These aren't the sanitized picture-book versions you half-remember. Each episode takes a fairy tale and finds the actual story hiding underneath it, the one with teeth and consequences and real stakes. The animation moves like someone who actually understood how to draw movement instead of just filling frames. You watch the first time for the tale itself, the second time because you realize how deliberately the show sets up its endings three scenes before they land.

Each episode presents a different fairy or folk tale, told as a complete story on its own, so no episode depends on the one before it. Despite the title, the source material is not limited to the tales gathered by the Brothers Grimm. Across its 23 episodes, the 1988 TV series mixes adventure, comedy and fantasy in its retellings.