MUMBAI: Timeless fairy tales in the form of cartoons from one of the most popular children's authors of all time!

This is what Hallmark has up its sleeve when it celebrates the 200th anniversary of Hans Christian Andersen. Hallmark will premiere a cartoon series Hans Christian Andersen The Fairytaler. It will feature a collection of timeless fairy tales written by him. The series will air every Saturday at 9 pm from 5 March.

One episode is titled The Professor And The Flea. The professor dreams to one day have enough money to build a flying balloon like his father's. So he travels the country with his devoted wife on get-rich-quick schemes as a magician, a contortionist and a general trickster, all of which fail miserably.

One day he meets a very talented flea who proves to be his ticket to fame, world travel and riches. It is only when the Professor and the Flea find themselves in a spot of bother somewhere in Africa, that the Professor eventually gets an opportunity to achieve his original ambition.

In Little Ida's Flowers the title character is sad because her flowers have wilted. She can't understand how they were blooming yesterday and today look faded and tired. Hans, her tutor who is a great storyteller, explains that the flowers have been at the Flower's Ball and are exhausted from dancing all night.

Ida decides to put the flowers to sleep in her dolls bed so that they might recover. That night Ida hears a sound from the playroom and decides to take a peek.

Hallmark will also air a simple and moving miniseries The Lives Of Saints on 6 March at 9:45 pm and on 22 March at the same time.

Nino Ricci's bestselling trilogy becomes an intimate epic of murder, sacrifice, and forgiveness as the conscience of one family is held hostage by the secrets and sins that have defined their lives over 20 years and across two continents.

Adultery, the evil eye and a snakebite. These elements can shape the childhood of a boy like Vittorio Innocente who lives in Valle De Sole. This is a small Italian village which is dominated by religion and superstition. With his father Mario in Canada, preparing for his family's eventual arrival, Vittorio's youth is informed by two women.

They are his strong-willed and fiery mother Christina and his Aunt Teresa played by Sophia Loren. Teresa is a schoolteacher and Vittorio's moral compass. To guide Vittorio through life, Teresa has given him the book The Lives of the Saints.

Later as a young man Vittorio spends his adult life denying his past. Things take a tunr for the worse when his estranged father starts to stalk Vittorio's sister, Rita, with murderous intent.