Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

Marilyn Agrelo's 2021 documentary tells how Sesame Street came about and treats it not as a nostalgia tour but as a public project. At the end of the 1960s, Joan Ganz Cooney and her team started from the idea that television's advertising techniques could be turned to education, with low-income children in inner cities as the intended audience. The film does not conceal that political aim and shows how deliberately the programme was designed around racial integration. The archive is extraordinary, with footage from Jim Henson's workshop, from rehearsals and from pre-broadcast tests. Bringing forward figures like Jon Stone makes clear the show was not one person's work. The film's limit is that it never opens the criticisms of the programme's later period and its commercialisation. Who it's for: viewers interested in television history, children's education and Jim Henson's work. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a documentary that keeps a critical eye on its subject, or viewers with no nostalgic connection to the show.