Jim Henson's Creature Shop: Back to Fraggle Rock

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sean Allsop goes behind the scenes inside the legendary Jim Henson's Creature Shop in New York, where fabric and materials bring life to characters beloved around the world. Sean joins the team as they work on their famous franchise Fraggle Rock, a series which started in the mid-80s. They're currently creating human-size walk-about characters for a brand new live show. Creative supervisor Jason Weber and the team work through costume fitting, sculpting, and go through archives to make the perfect Fraggle down in Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:11.0	It's New York, Autumn, 2025, and I'm heading to a special workshop.
0:18.4	The directions to get there, well, you get a pretty ordinary subway that takes you to a pretty ordinary street.
0:25.2	There's a building you enter, you get the elevator, dial in at the door, and you end up somewhere pretty extraordinary.
0:33.0	Hey, they're sure not at the door.
0:38.4	Hi, okay. Hi.
0:39.5	Hi, go.
0:40.2	Hello, you made it, you made it.
0:41.8	Come on in.
0:42.4	This is a workshop like no other, where they make characters come to life from fabrics and materials.
0:48.2	Working on a new project, we can come to the drawers first, you know, and use what we have.
0:51.9	So we have everything organized by color and,
0:55.7	you know, by type, so fur and then color, you know, and then we just stitch it on and see how
1:01.5	that can become that. What does it look like? Like, what does the profile look like? What does
1:05.7	this look like, you know, moving around and with a human hand inside the head manipulating the mouth, right?
1:11.8	How do we make this into a puppet?
1:16.5	Welcome to Jim Henson's Creature Shop.
1:19.8	I'm Sean Alsop, and this is the documentary from the BBC World Service.
1:25.7	For in the studio, I'm following the creative minds who are bringing puppets to life with fabric, foam,
1:31.5	and a lot of stitching.
1:33.0	I've always been mesmerised by these characters that came from this workshop, along with
1:37.4	millions around the world.
	...

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