Sesame Street was my first favorite TV show. It’s been the first favorite TV show for millions of kids since premiering in 1969, because Sesame Street is not only educational, but it’s got great characters and hits for days. Ernie didn’t have to go that hard with “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon,” but he did that, he did that for us.
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, a new documentary from director Marilyn Agrelo (Mad Hot Ballroom), takes a look at the show’s history, featuring “more than 20 interviews with many of the minds behind the show, as well as archival behind-the-scenes footage from its earliest days,” according to EW.
You can watch the trailer above. Here’s the official summary:
In the late 1960s, socially conscious media executive Joan Ganz Cooney and Sesame Workshop co-founder Lloyd Morrisett took on a revolutionary experiment: To harness the burgeoning power of television and create an educational, impactful, and entertaining show that could reach children nationwide. Cooney recruited visionary Muppets creator Jim Henson and acclaimed children’s television writer and director Jon Stone to craft the iconic and uplifting world of Sesame Street. Inspired by the civil rights movement, Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street focuses on the first two experimental and groundbreaking decades of Sesame Street, highlighting this visionary “gang” that audaciously interpreted radical changes in society and engaged children in ways that entertained and educated them like never before.
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street hit theaters on April 23 and VOD on May 7.
