‘It was truly an experiment’: how did we get to Sesame Street?

A new documentary, Street Gang, traces the early days, radical roots and creative energy of the groundbreaking childhood TV show

In 1970, cast members of Sesame Street, still in its first season on public television, traveled the country to gauge interest in the iconoclastic new show and its strange, magnetic array of puppet characters. The program was, at the time, an experiment, both as a madcap mosaic of creative talent, especially puppeteer Jim Henson and his cast of singularly endearing Muppets - and as a test of television's potential as an educational medium, with eight expert-designed learning objectives measured in test groups of small children.

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