“Dance your cares away, worries for another day / Let the music play, down at Fraggle Rock.” So went the infernally catchy theme song, complete with handclaps. Beneath the breezy trimmings, though, Jim Henson had a wild idea for his humble children’s show. He wanted it to bring about world peace.
The hit 1983 series from Muppets mastermind Henson featured his trademark blend of adorable characters, bouncy songs and goofy comedy. Only this time, the raucous romp came with a crucial difference. Fraggle Rock had grand ambitions of putting an end to global conflict. Airing in a turbulent era when tensions between the US and Russia were growing, the threat of nuclear war loomed and China was emerging as a superpower, it was quite the brief for a bunch of cute puppets.
Henson first floated his lofty aspirations in 1981 at London’s Hyde Park Hotel. For five successful years, The Muppet Show had been filmed at nearby Elstree Studios. Now Henson gathered his team to dream up ideas for a new show. As one puppeteer would later recall: “Jim walked into the room and said, ‘I want to make a show that will change the world and stop war.’” Bet you don’t get that at Paw Patrol script meetings.
The concept developed by the writers and puppeteers was all about peace, love and understanding. It planned to teach children empathy and tolerance. As Henson said in a making-of documentary: “By seeing how the various groups in Fraggle Rock learn to deal with their differences, perhaps we can learn a little bit about how to deal with ours.”
Unlike stablemates The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, which were created for US networks and only later adapted for international markets, Fraggle Rock was conceived from the start as a global brand. It was built from the ground up with diverse audiences in mind. That informed its entire tone. Advance knowledge that his creation would reach children worldwide inspired Henson’s vision of a cross-cultural show about conflict resolution. This, in turn, led to the premise of different “races” of creatures learning to live together.
