Once Upon a Time vs. Grimm: Which Fairy-Tale Drama Will You Watch?

Ready to step through the looking glass?

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Fairy tales are trendy again, and a couple of fall TV shows – ABC's Once Upon a Time and NBC's Grimm – will try to intrigue viewers with a more fantastical look at life.

Neither show is entirely make-believe, but both have story lines deeply rooted in the mythical and surreal.

Once Upon a Time, premiering Oct. 23, takes place in two worlds: Characters like Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin), Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), the evil queen (Lana Parrilla), Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle) and Jiminy Cricket (Raphael Sbarge) live in a fairy-tale world, but lead parallel lives as normal people in a small Maine town called Storybrooke.

Grimm, which debuts Oct. 21, is a police procedural set in modern-day Portland, Ore., with a major twist: It stars David Giuntoli as a homicide detective who investigates crimes perpetrated by fantastical and sinister storybook characters who have infiltrated the real world. The NBC show also stars Russell Hornsby and Bitsie Tulloch.