Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street’ on VOD, a Poignant Documentary About a TV Institution

Mr. Rogers got his own heart-tugging documentary, so why shouldn’t Sesame Street? So goes Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street — now on VOD — the new nonfiction film chronicling the genesis and influence of the long-running, groundbreaking children’s TV program. Speaking of ground, director Marilyn Agrelo (Mad Hot Ballroom) has a lot of it to cover, considering the series has been running since 1969, spans 4,561 episodes; has a history featuring luminary names like Jim Henson and Frank Oz; introduced us to many iconic Muppet characters, including Big Bird, Kermit the Frog, Bert and Ernie, Elmo, Grover and Oscar the Grouch; and generally kicked down a bunch of barriers on its way to being an indelible part of many people’s childhoods.

STREET GANG: HOW WE GOT TO SESAME STREET: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: New York City, 1981: The Sesame Street set buzzes with activity. Production assistants in headsets schlep equipment across the stage, actors read through scripts, Caroll Spinney strolls through wearing his garish orange Big Bird legs sans the tower of yellow feathers comprising the rest of his costume. Jon Stone, the main creative mind behind the series, directs a scene featuring a two-headed purple Muppet monster. In current and archival interviews, commentators describe Sesame Street as a pioneer in children’s TV programming: a show that held the attention of young audiences and taught them their ABCs.

Research showed that preschoolers could sing commercial jingles, so why couldn’t they do the same with something that would actually help them develop their minds? That was Joan Cooney’s assertion in the mid-1960s, so she and Lloyd Morrisett spent three years creating the Children’s Television Workshop, a collaborative of educators and TV pros, and developing Sesame Street. Their goal was to provide quality entertainment for lower-income families whose children frequently struggled in school. They got a then-massive $8 million in government funding to put the series on public television, recruited Jon Stone as director and head writer and got puppeteer Jim Henson to migrate his Muppet characters from commercials and late-night TV sketches to youth programming. They set the show on a bustling New York City sidewalk instead of the usual pristine TV suburb, cast a mix of Black, white and Latino actors and wrote funny sketches for puppets and animated characters, often featuring silly, catchy songs.

It was an experiment. It was the first of its kind. It was a huge hit. Maybe that goes without saying. We meet Frank Oz, the puppeteer who created furry blue monster Grover and the famously unibrowed Bert, foil to Henson’s Ernie. We meet Joe Raposo, the musical director and songwriter behind many famous ditties, including Kermit’s profound, melancholy signature number, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” We meet Latino actor Emilio Delgado, who was thrilled to be cast for a role that wasn’t a stereotype. Spinney talks about playing Big Bird as a towering naif and Oscar the Grouch as the type of difficult personality many of us have to deal with every day. We see how programmers in Mississippi wouldn’t air Sesame Street because of its racially integrated cast. We see how the show addressed the topic of death with its young viewership when cast member Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper, died in 1982. We watch Muppets interact with children who treat them as if they’re real and not puppets operated by men on the stage beneath them. We get a tribute to Henson, who passed away too young in 1990, and see Big Bird sing “It’s Not Easy Being Green” at his funeral. We are crying right now, especially if we’re Gen X and can sing every word of “People in Your Neighborhood” even though we haven’t heard it in 40 years.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Here’s a We-Heart-PBS Pass-the-Kleenex Weeper Double Feature: How We Got to Sesame Street followed by Won’t You Be My Neighbor?. (I’m pretty sure the shows aired in that order on my local PBS station in 1979.) Triple up with I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story if you’re in for the night.

Performance Worth Watching: Spinney as Oscar the Grouch uttering curse words during MUPPET BLOOPERS, which are worth the price of admission.

Memorable Dialogue: One commentator lavishes praise on Sesame Street in his broad description of it: “What television would do if it loved people instead of trying to sell to people.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Warning: There is no Elmo in this film. We barely see him and never hear his name. (I report this knowing some of you are not at all tickled by his falsetto and third-person references to himself. You know who you are, you monsters.) Grover makes a few brief appearances, but doesn’t get the mini-profile he deserves, and the same goes for Cookie Monster. These blue men (boys? Things? Things) were goliaths in my house. Goliaths. How do they get skimped?

Well, there’s just too, too much about Sesame Street and its half-century of existence for one documentary to cover in 107 minutes, so the movie sometimes feels slight and surface-y, narratively uneven, avoiding the once-ubiquitous question as to whether Bert and Ernie were gay and not even mentioning how consumers once pummeled each other while questing for Tickle Me Elmo dolls. It feels rushed to get to the major events of its backstory, layering its final moments with an emotionally intensified musical score to generate a sense of dramatic climax. Note, there is no real climax to the story; Sesame Street is still in production, airing new episodes every year. ELMO LIVES, HE IS ETERNAL, HAHAHAHAHAHAH.

But this is just me playing killjoy nitpicker. How We Got to Sesame Street is equal parts informative and delightful, offering a few decades’ perspective on one of the linchpins of children’s educational entertainment, with a few standout candid moments (I’ll say it again: MUPPET BLOOPERS) and plenty of insightful commentary from key figures. Agrelo covers the bases well, emphasizing Sesame Street’s status as a socially progressive benchmark. The show’s creators were primarily white, but saw a need for underrepresented youth of color to see people like themselves on TV. It was about representation before the word had any meaning in this context. (Notably, an aside about Black Muppet Roosevelt Franklin, criticized as a stereotype despite being created by Black cast member Matt Robinson, doesn’t address the topic with enough analytic depth.)

Obviously, the show’s impact was nearly universal for those of a certain age, and thankfully, the doc doesn’t exist only to exploit our nostalgia. It also serves to remind us how foundational early childhood education is in human development, because those of us raised on Sesame Street wouldn’t recall its silly little jingles and the antics of its colorful characters with such vivid affection.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is a sturdy, entertaining and educational film, and it’s absolutely worth your time. Now we can only hope Elmo gets his own documentary, right? Right? Hello? Anyone?

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to watch Street Gang: How to Get to Sesame Street