Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 30, 2021

The popular children's television program Sesame Street is the subject of Director Marilyn Agrelo's Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, a well rounded -- informative, funny, and moving -- portrait of the show's origins, concepts, popularity, and boundary breaking, socially and educationally alike. Blending vintage footage from the show and its production with newly captured interview clips with cast and crew and family, the film offers a compelling look back at the show's forward thinking concepts and construction.

The documentary focuses its attention first on series creator Jon Stone, the first producer and a prolific director who envisioned a kid’s show for kids that did not speak down to them but rather both taught them a rudimentary educational foundation while revealing the larger picture of the world around them. The film explores Stone’s collaboration with Joan Cooney and other creative talent like Jim Henson. The film looks at the process of developing the show in front of child subjects, its urban setting and focus, finding the right title, and its debut in 1969. It looks at the cast’s racial integration and cultural makeup, acceptance and reservations in Mississippi, and further examines cast and characters (human and Muppet), the music, and even death on the show and outtakes.

Street Gang is less concerned with Sesame Street's staying power as it is with why it worked when it was made, the sort of marriage of social awareness and educational value that propelled it to instant success. The documentary takes its time to explore narrative, technical, social, and educational perspectives while still having some fun on the flip side, showing some of the "real" personalities and the bloopers that were a byproduct, giving the material a mild edge that was, of course, not in evidence as it aired on television. It's not a depth-and-breadth documentary, though, hitting high points but weaving together a larger master narrative on the show's place in culture and aspirations for achieving something bigger than previously thought possible on the television medium.

More, the film focuses tightly, intensely, and intimately on the people who made the show work. The creative talents who envisioned the show, performed the puppeteering, acted in the flesh, wrote the material, and penned the music are given ample airtime to tell the show's full picture history and build its full image. Audiences are provided in-depth biographies and first-person accounts of the larger collaborative effort that made the show work. And rightly so. Sesame Street may be known for puppets like Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, and Oscar the Grouch, but it was the people who made it work: people who brainstormed the ideas, executed the production, and acted in front of the camera. This was truly a show "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Argelo, working from Author Michael Davis' 2008 book of the same name, paints a vivid portrait of the people who built the show from the ground up into a cultural icon but, more importantly, a well versed educational powerhouse that both instructed children in the way things work and also offered glimpses into the way the world is beyond their television screens.

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Screen Media brings Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street to Blu-ray with a quality 1080p transfer. The picture cycles through a number of visual cues, including newly minted digital interview clips, old film footage, and 4x3 clips from the show. The older footage generally holds up well, certainly showing some color deterioration, heavy grain, spots and speckles, and the like, but the quality is rather good overall, bringing life and depth and texture to the footage from the set and the behind the scenes scenarios. Some older video footage struggles a bit more with definition and color solidification, but this is a case of "it is what it is" and within the original context. The new digital clips reveal crisp person and environmental definition, showing makeup, hair, pores, and clothing textures with appreciable and accurate intimate definition. Colors in these interviews soar for boldness and accuracy. The picture does not leap off the screen, either for the old film or new digital footage, but it's very well done in the aggregate and flows together to build a total picture narrative.

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street's primary audio track is of the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 variety. The presentation lacks obvious surround usage, lingering along the front, albeit with impressive width and balanced engagement. The track features solid musical definition and clear and commanding dialogue. The former can struggle when the track implements vintage audio clips, lacking crispness and fidelity, but the more contemporarily engineered cues certainly offer a far superior output presence. Dialogue is center positioned and clear, though again lacking polish in vintage show and interview clips but finding commanding balance and presence in the newer content. The track offers a few occasional bursts of environmental support details, particularly city street traffic, as well as various sounds around the shooting set, which also linger along the front. For the most part, though, this is music and dialogue intensive with little beyond. An LPCM 2.0 uncompressed soundtrack is also included and fares similarly.

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street includes several featurettes. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

• Jerry and Richard: The Puppeteers (1080p, 2:52): Essentially a deleted scene in which the interviewees talk up the show's top puppeteers.
• When It Went Wrong: Muppet Outtakes (1080p, 2:51): Fun moments from takes that didn't work out quite as envisioned.
• Joe Raposo: Musical Genius (1080p, 3:17): A closer look at Raposo's Sesame Street music.
• Sunny Days: Origin of a Song (1080p, 1:08): An all-too-quick look at the show's iconic opening theme.
• Sounds of Sesame Street Featurette (1080p, 2:42): How to make some basic sound effects for children's television.

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is a well rounded production that focuses on narrative and production essentials but also builds the story of the people who made the show, as it originally aired, such a success and, now, a cultural icon. It's an absorbing look back that is nostalgic, informative, and even moving. Screen Media's Blu-ray is solid all around, offering quality video and audio presentations and even a few supplements on the side. Recommended.