Bringing the Muppets to Moscow

Lives Less Ordinary

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.6 • 814 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Natasha Lance Rogoff’s daunting task of making Sesame Street in post-Soviet Russia.

In the early 90s, American journalist Natasha Lance Rogoff was covering the collapse of the Soviet Union – until the Muppets came calling, and she was tasked with bringing Sesame Street to Moscow. After decades of communism a new Russia was emerging, but could it embrace a US TV show?

Creating Ulitsa Sezam was a daunting challenge for Natasha. She would have to overcome a huge culture clash and, along the way, face mobsters with shark tanks, bankruptcy, and the kidnapping of Elmo. Natasha has written a book called Muppets in Moscow: The unexpected crazy true story of making Sesame Street in Russia.

Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: Maryam Maruf Editor: Munazza Khan

Transcript

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0:00.0	On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.
0:06.9	It was an extraordinary news story.
0:09.1	The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,
0:13.7	mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.
0:18.0	One of the great mysteries in English criminal history.
0:20.7	We're still looking for Lucan.
0:22.1	It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime.
0:25.9	I'm Alex von Tundselman.
0:27.3	This is The Lucan Obsession.
0:29.2	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.6	They invited the top puppet designer to come into the studio,
0:36.8	and he walks in with these two sacks.
0:40.2	He pulls out puppets.
0:42.0	He slides them onto his hand.
0:43.6	And he starts performing a scene.
0:46.1	And one of the puppets says, you know, I'm going to kill you.
0:50.1	And the other one starts, you know, banging on the other one.
0:53.2	And everybody in the room is laughing.
0:55.4	And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, I don't know if this puppet on puppet violence is going to really fly.
1:07.5	This is Natasha Lance Rogoff.
1:09.9	She's a serious journalist and she spent a lot of her career
1:13.1	covering stories in Russia. So where do these puppets come in? Well, back in the early 90s, just
	...

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