A Documentary All About Sesame Street Is Premiering Soon

Big Bird, Elmo, and the rest of the cast of Sesame Street are some of the most recognizable characters on TV, but not everyone knows the full history behind them. And that’s where the new Sesame Street documentary, Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street, steps in. The documentary will explains how the classic children’s show came to TV and answers the age-old question — “can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?”

The long-running children’s show has been educating and entertaining children for 51 seasons. Sesame Street made its television debut in 1969 with the goal of creating a show for preschool-aged kids that was equal parts entertaining and educational. The show accomplished all of that and more, by continuing to educate generations of kids around the world to this day with the lovable muppet characters, like Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch, and popular segments like the “Letter of the Day.”

Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street will make its big screen debut later this month and here’s everything you need to know before then.

The Documentary Will Premiere In Theaters First

The great news is you won’t have to wait too long to watch it. You can expect to see Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street premiere in select theaters on April 23 and on VOD, aka video on demand platforms, on May 7. The documentary will be available to stream on HBO Max and air on HBO sometime later this year, according to Deadline.

The documentary is rated PG for some thematic elements, language, and smoking.

The Documentary’s Trailer Is Full Of Old Footage

Street Gang includes interviews and videos from the origins of Sesame Street, showing the start of the show that changed children’s programming forever. This is teased in the first official trailer for the documentary, which includes a lot of archival footage showing the mechanics behind those famous muppets and how they came to life.

“This was an experiment,” Sesame Street co-founder Joan Ganz Cooney says in the trailer. “No one had seen anything like it.”

The Documentary Is Based On A Book

Before you watch Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street, you can familiarize yourself with the story behind it. The documentary is based on the New York Times best selling book, Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis. The book includes the participation of Ganz Cooney, and unveils “the idealistic personalities, decades of social and cultural change, stories of compassion and personal sacrifice, and miraculous efforts” from the team behind the show that made it such a hit among people of all ages, according to Amazon.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in learning more about, then you can purchase a copy of the book online or wait until Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street comes to a theater near you.