Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tell Me A Story’ On CBS All Access, Where Childhood Imagery Ties Strangers Together

Kevin Williamson has been providing TV and movie fans with witty and at times scary stories for over two decades, starting with Scream and Dawson’s Creek. His new show, Tell Me A Story, is supposed to be a modern-day take on three scary children’s stories that have been told for over a century. Does he succeed in waving the stories together?

TELL ME A STORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A rainy day outside of New York City; the skyline is in the background as we see a truck drive up to a small, shabby house, carrying a large bag.

The Gist: The guy with the bag is Mitch Longo (Michael Raymond-James) who has hooked his brother Eddie (Paul Wesley) up with a job by telling Sam (Dorian Missick), the guy in charge, that Eddie is sober, which he definitely is not. He opens the bag and there are pig masks and a gun, so it’s definitely not a construction job.

We also encounter upwardly-mobile couple Jordan (James Wolk) and Beth (Spencer Grammer); Beth was late so she took a pregnancy test, which was negative. She’s not all that upset; while she and Jordan planned on having kids, she’s not so sure anymore, given the state of the world. Jordan, though, still wants kids, and the two of them get into arguments about bringing a child into a world where Donald Trump is president and all that comes with it.

Jordan manages a high-end restaurant in a luxury hotel, and he’s just hired a buddy as a new chef: Tim Sherman (Sam Jaeger), who moved back home to live with his mother Colleen (Kim Cattrall) after his wife died. His high-school senior daughter Kayla (Danielle Sherman) would rather be home in Oakland. But on her first day at her new school, she meets Laney (Paula Singer), and she’s soon sneaking out to go with her to a club named Rapture… whose bartender is Eddie.

We also see Hannah (Dania Ramirez), a war vet who needs to get her VA benefits. We find out later that one of the dancers at Rapture, Gabe (Davi Santos) is her brother, who calls her to help him get out of a jam his roommate got him in with a notorious bad guy.

More lives intersect when Kayla sleeps with a guy named Nick (Billy Magnussen) that she meets in the club, then finds out to her (and his) horror that he works at her school. Also: Jordan and Beth are in a jewelry store when the pig-masked robbers burst in, and things definitely go sideways in a hurry.

Our Take: Based on a Mexican series, Tell Me A Story is supposed to intertwine modern-day versions of “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Hansel and Gretel” and “The Three Little Pigs” around these groups of people who are destined to interact with each other. We trust that Kevin Williamson, who has brought us complex ensemble shows like Dawson’s Creek and scary movies like Scream, has the capacity to bring all of this together, but in the first two episodes, it’s hard to see that part of it.

Sure, there’s some sledgehammer-obvious symbolism in the first episode, like the pig masks and the red rain slicker Colleen offers Kayla when she goes out. But so far that connection isn’t obvious. Right now it’s yet another show where strangers in a big city get linked together like they live in a small town. Williamson and his writers have managed to pull these groups together without forcing things too much, like a fellow CBSAA show, One Dollar, does. There’s at least a logic to why all these people might be in the same area (Soho and the Lower East Side) or find themselves there.

Williamson also helped himself with perfect casting. Wolk is at his earnest best as Jordan, who sincerely doesn’t know why his girlfriend Beth all of a sudden doesn’t want kids. Cattrall plays Colleen with her usual brand of sexiness and vulnerability, acknowledging that she never liked Kayla’s mom and separated herself from their family because of it. As the “Grandma” of the Red Riding Hood story, it’ll be interesting to see what her contributions are going forward.

Sex and Skin: As we said, Kayla and Nick sleep together, where we find that she has a “lone wolf” tattoo on her waist. We also see Gabe and his roommate have a “party” with a guy in his hotel suite, who has also supplied a generous amount of blow.

Parting Shot: Also as we said, the robbery goes sideways, and after the robbers run out, we find out just how sideways it went.

Sleeper Star: We hope we see more of Singer as Laney. In the second episode, she and her “buddy” Ethan (Rarmian Newton) tell Kayla about their messed up lives in order to draw out her story. We also encounter Becki Newton as the manager of the hotel where Jordan and Tim work. It’s hard to imagine Williamson cast Newton for a tiny guest role, so we are looking forward to seeing how she factors in later on.

Most Pilot-y Line: “You’re all I want, Jordan,” says Beth outside the jewelry shop. “You’ve always been what I want.” Cheesy lines like that often are used as accidental foreshadowing. We’ll just leave that there.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The performances and Williamson’s writing make up for some of the clunkiness of the plotting. And as everyone’s lives get more tightly connected, the show should get better.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Tell Me A Story on CBS All Access