Steve Barron’s gift is making effects part of the storytelling. His work on The Storyteller earns our recommendation: absorbing, unsettling family television, with elaborate puppetry and a solemnity that sometimes makes short tales feel heavy.
Fi1m perspective
The puppetry in The Storyteller (1988) rewards a close look. Barron directed episodes of Jim Henson’s folk-tale series, which gives his interest in combining live action and effects a particularly suitable home. We found it unsettling, and the elaborate puppetry was the reason. John Hurt’s narration holds our attention alongside it, so there is more to the programme than waiting for the next creature to appear.
His music videos, including Billie Jean, Don’t You Want Me and Take On Me, had already made narrative and animation part of the attraction. Working in 35mm helped him pursue a cinematic look in that short form. His feature debut, Electric Dreams (1984), brought music-video techniques into romantic comedy; The Storyteller then offered another kind of short-form storytelling, with Henson and writer Anthony Minghella as collaborators. That history makes the puppetry less of a detour than it might first seem.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) was the feature breakthrough, combining music-video visuals with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop effects. The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996), on which he also worked as a screenwriter, continued the interest in puppetry, this time in a European picture-book style. The move into fantasy miniseries such as Merlin (1998) gave him mythic settings and extensive digital effects to work with. Across those changes of format, the recurring attraction is the chance to put something invented beside a live performer.
The reservation is clearest in the programme we recommend. The Storyteller can be too solemn, making its short tales feel heavier than they need to. That is a matter of tone, not a failure of the puppetry, and it matters because the programme otherwise holds us so well. Henson, Minghella and Hurt deserve their share of the credit; Barron’s contribution belongs within that company. Start with those folk tales, but do not expect the puppets to make them cosy.
Biography
Steve Barron (born 4 May 1956) is an Irish-British filmmaker and music video director. Born in Dublin, he is the son of filmmaker Zelda Barron. He began his career as a camera assistant on feature films including A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Duellists (1977) and Superman (1978).
In the late 1970s Barron moved into directing music videos, creating many of the most influential examples of the 1980s for artists including Michael Jackson ('Billie Jean'), a-ha ('Take on Me') and Dire Straits ('Money for Nothing'). His feature directorial debut was the science-fiction comedy Electric Dreams (1984).
Barron directed three episodes of the Jim Henson series The Storyteller (1987–1988). Subsequent work includes the features Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Coneheads (1993) and Mike Bassett: England Manager (2001), as well as the miniseries Merlin (1998) and later television series such as The Durrells (2016) and Around the World in 80 Days (2021).
