Underrated TV shows: The Tenth Kingdom

What a wonderful yet underrated gem of a TV show this is. Now that Once Upon A Time is getting so popular I can't help but think of what came before but seems so unknown. In fact growing up only myself, my father and my best friend seemed to know what it was.

I'm talking about The Tenth Kingdom: a fantasy miniseries that aired in 2000. I still own copies of it that we recorded on videotape years ago - adverts and all. The tale follows a young woman named Virginia Lewis, a single waitress living with her father in their New York City apartment. Things seem pretty standard until we flash to the events of another world where the happenings of the fairytales we are all familiar with are events in history and a dashing young prince is involved in a dark turn of events that seem deeply rooted in familiar tales. As a portal opens that suck Virginia and her father Tony into this fairytale world the adventure that unfolds leads them through the Nine Kingdoms and shines truth on the fairytales we've so heavily appreciated within our society. It's a lot of fun and it got a lot of good reviews, but not so great ratings. Since then it has been shown several times on Sky One and currently will cost around £6 on Amazon UK or $9 on Amazon.com. There's also a novel version of the tale by Katheryn Wesley if you'd rather read it.

My favourite characters have to be the three clueless trolls: Burly, Blabberwort and Bluebell. Their antics across the Kingdom to try and catch Virginia, Tony and the Prince are so hilarious and they fail many times over. A real highlight of the entire season is when they are ported over to New York in the first episode. Their total fascination with our world is strangely adorable - especially when they find a CD player and find themselves addicted to the song 'Night Fever' which they then take and play all over the Nine Kingdoms. In fact I'd only just realised that Jay from Modern Family plays Relish the Troll King and... well now that's all I see when I look at him.

If you're a fan of Once Upon A Time, True Blood or films like Enchanted/Ever After or anything vaguely within the fantasy genre I highly recommend this show to you. It's so funny and such a wonderful miniseries. I'd really like to not be the only person who holds this show dear. Though a sequel was discussed and the cast were interested, nothing ever came about. In which case... I know what I'm gonna do if when I win the lottery!

I'll leave you with the beautiful opening credits to the show - I think it remains my favourite show opening of all time with Game of Thrones as a close second - enjoy!