I don’t think I’m the only one fascinated by television that we cannot watch. North Korea’s, for example, which broadcasts programs and series that we will never be able to see outside its borders or, in its day, that of the Soviet Union, which, although it exported some of its products, did not import any, leaving the programming with a self-produced content that has not survived much in our days. While the rest of the world had shows like Sesame Street, I Love Lucy, or MASH, in Russia and allied countries they survived with The Shadows Disappear at Dusk or The Two Captains. If they haven’t gone down in history, well, there’s a reason for that.
Let’s play, comrade!
In the Soviet Union, they had, to be fair, a programming lineup with a bit of everything: news broadcasts, children’s programs, movies, documentaries, football, or ice hockey. And, of course, in the whitest and least scandalous way you can imagine: nudity, violence, foul language, drugs, and any criticism of the system were prohibited. In short, creativity was at zero in a model that, in the 80s, was starting to show cracks and cried out for openness.
And who had the upper hand in television content during that decade? Whether we like it or not, the United States. And, of course, although Mikhail Gorbachev was beginning a period of openness, they were not going to allow any Yankee propaganda program to reach the citizens’ televisions. What arrived were programs from the United Kingdom or Latin America, or even versions of contests for which they did not pay copyright fees.
We are talking, above all, about programs based on classic literature like David Copperfield or Robin of Sherwood, usually with a voiceover that narrated the story instead of using traditional dubbing. According to some, programs like Daktari, a family show on CBS about nature conservation, or Lassie could be seen. But nothing more… Until Jim Henson knocked on the Iron Curtain to let some little characters made of plush come through.
This landing would not have been possible without The Dark Crystal, which arrived at the Moscow Film Festival and, normally, the only place where foreign films could be seen. Quickly, in a country that had a tradition of puppetry, everyone wanted to see it, the screenings sold out rapidly, and the lines started to wrap around the street. At the festival, in fact, they had to schedule more screenings to meet the demand and Henson, who only wanted (as he said back then) world peace, was very clear: it was time to land with the Muppets.
On January 8, 1989, during the children’s program Budilnik, the first episode of Fraggle Rock, known there as Скала Фрэгглов, was aired. In reality, the series had ended in the United States two years earlier and the broadcast was just an experiment, but when it was proposed, Henson was more than willing to play along. The audience was incredible, unprecedented, and the public wanted more and more… And that’s how the barrier was broken. The first season was dubbed (in the format I mentioned earlier, of the “reader” of scripts) and began airing in the fall, shortly before the very sad death of its creator. And it was no small feat: Fraggle Rock became the first contemporary series to be broadcast in the Soviet Union.
Shortly after the arrival of the Fraggles, the Berlin Wall fell, and in the production, they joked about whether it might have had something to do with it. And in part, it is true: not because of the Fraggles in particular, but because of the open-mindedness. After decades of isolation, people wanted more, and they certainly got it, even on television: soon all kinds of programs from all over the world began to air, and the Fraggles, to this day, are fully available, dubbed in a Western style, on their Apple TV+. The phrase “Let’s play, leave your problems behind” has never sounded so real.
