Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

Fuzzy feels abound in this entertaining if slight documentary about the creation of the iconic kids’ TV show.

Documentary as a form is prone to hyperfixation and hyperbole. But in the case of Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, where numerous talking heads speak to the timelessness of the show – that 200 years from now people will still know who Bert and Ernie are – it feels remarkably apt. From the first plunking notes of the Sesame Street theme song, you can feel your heart begin to swell. As the film peeks under the hood to see how the iconic show came to be, it’s impossible not to get sucked into the nostalgia.

As much talk as there was among Sesame Street’s creative team about seeking out a viewership of inner-city kids, ensuring their programme was educating and entertaining in equal measure, they showed just as much action in making that happen. The show’s creators brought in both television writers and educators; studied what kids needed, what they retained, what they forgot, and what they wanted to see; created a slide projector device to more scientifically gauge when the show would lose a child’s attention.

The street setting was introduced because, for a New York City kid cooped up in the apartment, that was where the action was. Lest you think that Sesame Street’s massive success was a happy accident, Street Gang is here to inform you that the show was rigorous in its attempts to appeal to its target audience.

Street Gang flits between different facets of its subject, surveying everything from music direction to considerations of Big Bird’s design. The transitions often feel too smooth, whisking you away from topics that could use more insight, such as representation or puppet construction. When it can’t fully duck deeper subjects, it shies away from plumbing too deeply. The film is at its most absorbing when looking at how competing impulses could gel into weird, groundbreaking TV magic, although even that feels under-explored. Its interest is the whole rather than the individual parts.

Given that Street Gang was produced by HBO, the same company that snapped up Sesame Street and made it temporarily exclusive to their service, it might be futile to wish for a documentary that delved deeper, covering how the show’s mission has changed through the years. Instead, after chronicling Jim Henson’s run, the film sputters without much to say about the intervening decades. Still, it’s hard not to be sucked in by the sheer effect of Sesame Street’s radius: on Sesame Street, with its sunny days and clear air, even shallow breaths feel more full.

Published 5 May 2021

Tags: Marilyn Agrelo Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street