In late 2007 I was lucky enough to spend some time chatting with veteran television writer Victor Pemberton about his time working on cult 80s series, Fraggle Rock as script editor and producer.
While today the phrase “dance your cares away, worries for another day” could be a mantra used on Strictly Come Dancing, twenty five years ago these words introduced viewers to a world of Fraggles, Doozers and conflict resolution in the programme conceived by Jim Henson.
Henson, a key contributor to the success of Sesame Street in 1969 and later the creator of the phenomenally successful Muppet Show in 1976, had a vision of an allegorical world of creatures that would reflect real world issues such as prejudice, social conflict and the environment. Heavy stuff for early afternoon on ITV…
Jonathan Melville: How did you get involved with Fraggle Rock?
Victor Pemberton: It was through a very dear friend of mine, Duncan Kenworthy, producer of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, who I’d met while working in Kuwait for American television.
He’d joined forces with Jim Henson and said to me one day “we’re going to do new show, based on material shot in Canada and each country will do their own segments – can you come up with an idea for what we can do with the UK segments?”
Adventures in Primetime 