NEW YORK (AP) — A new home. Some format changes. The same monsters.
“Sesame Street” launches its 56th season on Nov. 10 with NASCAR champion Bubba Wallace as a guest, a slightly tweaked format and a new way to watch—through Netflix.
“Here you go, hello,” Elmo invites viewers at the beginning of the show. “Elmo is so glad to see you.”
The popular children's product will offer an 11-minute main story at the top – up from 9 minutes last year – and several new segments mixed in with returning favorites.
“In the history of Sesame Street, we've always reinvented things over the last 56 years,” says Sal Perez, executive producer. “We're always looking for ways to modernize—to make the look of the show seem really appealing to kids today.”
The first episode's 11-minute main plot features Elmo, Abby and Zoey competing in three types of neighborhood races, joined by an alarming number of puppet chickens, with Wallace providing side commentary.
First there's a sprint with a chicken on each back—”a bird in motion,” Wallace suggests—then a race with a chicken on a spoon, and finally a sack race with chickens also in a sack. Elmo is disappointed when he doesn't win at first, but soon realizes that he didn't have lunch, so he's low on fuel – lesson of the day.
“I just love it when we bring celebrities to Sesame Street because they bring their own flavor and perspective and experience. And a lot of the Elmo racing episode was just enhanced by Bubba being there,” says head writer Halcyon Person. (Miley Cyrus will also be a future guest.)
Person says expanding the main story even just a few minutes gives her and her team more room to add elements she thinks kids will enjoy.
“That extra two minutes may not seem like much to our audience, but it allows us to have a song in every episode that we know our audience loves,” says Person, whose credits include “Dee and Friends in Oz” and “World of Karma.”
“We'll have more animation, more comedy, more time for physical humor. We know that when kids laugh, they learn. So we just love it when we can make them laugh so our important messages can be heard loud and clear, too.”
Netflix and the fourth wall
The deal with Netflix is a game-changer for Sesame Street, as the streamer gives it international reach—the new season will air in 30 languages—while keeping it on its longtime PBS homepage and the PBS app. Episodes will be available on Netflix and PBS on the same day.
“The partners themselves have been amazingly supportive and allowed us to do what Sesame Street does,” Perez says. “They know we have experience creating content. So they just support and promote the brand.”
Sesame Street also tends to break the fourth wall, with the creatures addressing the viewer and perhaps confessing their feelings or asking for advice.
“I think this season we wanted to just play with that and make it a really expected feature of the show—that the characters don't just talk to you, but they really draw you in,” Person says.
“It's just another way to really build those relationships and make the kids feel like they're part of the action, that nothing that happens in the story could have happened without them and that our characters really need them.”
Segments like “Cookie's Food Truck” and “Abby's Magical Animals” will be transitioning, and there will also be a new one, the animated “Tales from 123,” which takes viewers to an apartment building where furry monsters live.
“It gave us a glimpse inside. We have these amazing characters living in an apartment building, and Elmo and Tango have real comedic adventures throughout, really crazy adventures,” Perez says.
In the first Tales of 123, Elmo wants to meet Grover to play, but the two get confused, so they get into elevators and race up the stairs until Tango saves the day. Finally reunited, they naturally play hide and seek.
It's like a backstage pass to Sesame Street, and of course one rude monster will complain. “No New York apartment would be complete without Oscar as superintendent,” says Perez.
