With Valentine’s Day coming tomorrow, I suppose it would be on point to talk about something romantic, so I think I’ll plug one of my favorite romantic TV series that I just finished rewatching yet again: Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It’s a spin-off of the Once Upon a Time series, but is only slightly connected. Aside from one thing that might be a bit confusing if you’re not familiar with the parent series, this one pretty much stands alone. It’s a self-contained 13-episode story, so it never had the chance to spin out of control in the way the original series did, and I think I may enjoy it more than I enjoyed the main series.

We’ve got two romances that actually work, and one of them is truly healthy and supportive. There’s a good villain redemption that involves the villain realizing that they were doing wrong, knowing where they went wrong, apologizing to the people they wronged, suffering the consequences for their evil actions, and trying to atone for their wrongs. Then there’s also a really satisfying villain comeuppance.

Where the series relates to the parent Once Upon a Time series is in structure. Like the parent series, it involves a mash-up of (Disney versions of) fairy tales and other stories. In this case, it’s an odd mix of Alice in Wonderland and Aladdin that somehow works. Jafar from Aladdin is the Big Bad, and there are genies (though not the Genie). There are also a few bits from Robin Hood, and there’s a suggestion that one of the characters is one of Cinderella’s stepsisters. It’s also told with the present-day story plus flashbacks to things from the backstory that are relevant to the current story (a lot like the structure of Lost).

This is essentially a sequel to Alice in Wonderland. As an adult, Alice goes back to Wonderland to find evidence that Wonderland is real to show her father, who thinks she made up the stories about her adventures. While she’s there, she meets someone and falls in love and decides to stay, but then she loses her love and returns home, grief-stricken. Our story picks up when she gets word that her lost love may still be alive, so she sets off to go back to Wonderland and rescue him, but she finds out that this is all part of a much greater evil scheme.

I really like the romance in this series because it’s so healthy. It involves two people who like and respect each other. They start as friends, then fall in love. All the conflict keeping them apart is external, so there’s no bickering. It probably would have been a boring story if we’d seen it in chronological order, since all the conflict comes after they’re already in love and a couple. But this story starts with the conflict keeping them apart and focuses on their efforts to get back to each other and later to overcome the obstacles to them being able to have peace. We see the early part of their relationship, with them meeting and falling in love, in flashback, so it’s just a highlight reel of the pivotal moments set against their current woes.

Alice makes for a great heroine. She’s good at heart and kind, but without being an idiot about it or a total pushover. She can be steely and ruthless when she has to be. We see her learning how to fight in the flashbacks, so it’s not one of those cases of someone just picking up a sword and miraculously being good at it. She’s also clever and mostly avoids falling for the villains’ traps. She keeps her head in a crisis. I just really find myself liking her.

This series is one of my comfort views. I wouldn’t call it cozy because there’s some serious peril, but I find it oddly reassuring now that I know the outcome. I like spending time with these people. Their version of Wonderland can be a bit campy, but I like it for the most part. There’s a bit of a steampunk esthetic in some of it. My only real quibbles for the series are the “1990s homecoming dress from David’s Bridal” look for the fancy court dresses and the epilogue. I can kind of see some of the reason why they gave that outcome to some of the characters, but it doesn’t ring true to me as something they would have been happy with.

The series is showing on Disney+, so if you want something in hour-long (a bit less) chunks that wraps up in 13 episodes and has a nice mix of action and romance with a fairytale flair, it’s worth checking out.