Because we grow out of so many lovely parts of our childhood, it’s reassuring to find one that remains with us.
Thanks to the last couple of years of prime-time TV, of all things, fairy tales are now one of those rare childhood treasures that adults don’t have to leave behind.
ABC’s “Once Upon a Time” and NBC’s “Grimm” adapted classic tales into stories for grownups, and both did well enough that ABC is adding a companion show: “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland,” which debuts Thursday at 8 p.m.
Where “Once Upon a Time” builds largely on Disney’s beloved “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland” starts with Lewis Carroll’s equally indelible “Alice in Wonderland.”
“Alice” is about as classic as fairy tales get, the story of a girl who goes down a rabbit hole and finds an enchanting world where she learns about all the things that matter.
Viewers 55 and older may also remember it as one of the few fairy tales that also spawned a top-10 rock ’n’ roll song, Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 classic “White Rabbit.”
And sure enough, the White Rabbit, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the Red Queen and all the rest of the cast return for “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland,” which comes from “Once Upon a Time” executive producers Adam Horowitz, Edward Kitsis and Steve Pearlman, along with Zack Estrin from “The River.”
“I don’t think fairy tales are something you have to bring back for people,” says Horowitz. “They’re something that’s always there with us. We know them in an instinctive way.”
“It’s the same thing as how every year at the holidays we all want to hear ‘A Christmas Carol’ again,” says Kitsis.
But with Alice, as with Snow White, you can’t just dramatize the old story and expect to score a prime-time hit.
“We try to take the story people know and use it as a jumping-off point,” says Kitsis. “What happens after the story we know? What happens when this little girl Alice has grown up?”
In “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland,” growing up is anything but fun.
Alice (Sophie Lowe) has been institutionalized by her father, who assumes she must be delusional after she tells him about her adventures at the other end of the rabbit hole.
She faces a stern panel of unsympathetic administrators who will only release her from their dreadful institution if she submits to a “treatment” that would erase all her memories — liberating her from this notion of a “Wonderland.”
The “treatment” would mean forever losing the happiest, most joyful time she knew. It would also means forgetting Cyrus (Peter Gadiot), the handsome genie with whom, on her visit to Wonderland, she fell in love.
The unspoken message here is that those who would force us to let go of all things “childish” or “foolish” may also be taking away our greatest pleasures.
It’s the kind of ominous, dark undertone that weaves through many fairy tales, and Kitsis and Horowitz don’t ignore it.
“We try not to be afraid of the dark,” says Horowitz. “That’s part of what fairy tales are about, that kind of caution. But we also try to find hope in the story.”
In Alice’s case, the “treatment” seems imminent until she runs into the Knave of Hearts (Michael Socha) and the animated White Rabbit (voiced by John Lithgow), who convince her there’s a chance for something she had thought impossible: getting back to Wonderland and seeing Cyrus again.
“There’s always hope,” says Horowitz.
The fast-forward of “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland” thus turns the child’s tale into a grown-up love story, much the way that “Once Upon a Time” conjures a grown-up sequel for “Snow White.”
Serious “Once Upon a Time” fans will find some of that show’s DNA in “Wonderland,” though Kitsis and Horowitz says it was also designed to stand on its own.
“If you never heard the ‘Alice’ story or read the book or seen ‘Once Upon a Time,’ you can sit down and enjoy this story,” says Horowitz.
“We work from what’s interesting about the individual characters,” says Kitsis. “Why is the Mad Hatter mad? Why is Grumpy grumpy?”
That opens an almost limitless treasure chest of possibilities, and the advances over the past few years in computer-generated imagery have made it much easier to dramatize them on screen.
From stormy skies to vanishing puffs of dust, visual effects keep appearing more realistic and satisfying — and they’re being put to good use by both “Once Upon a Time” and its little sister show.
“You can do so much more than you could do just a few years ago,” says Kitsis. “It has really opened our imaginations.
“The important thing, for us, has been time and planning. When you’re doing 22 episodes, you’re always fighting with time and you have to learn to look ahead so you know what you want to do a few episodes down the line.
“Trying to do anything at the last minute never works.”
But when you look ahead and it does work, it becomes a TV producer’s very own wonderland — and keeps millions of childhoods alive a little longer.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
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