Fraggle Rock: How to Write a Children's Show
Fraggle Rock: How to Write a Children's Show
Fraggle Rock is the most well-written children’s show of all time. I may be biased, though, since this was my favorite show when I was very young—probably the very first favorite show I ever had.
But I’ve watched some episodes as an adult, and I’m always impressed by how incredibly well made the whole thing is. As a children’s show, it offers a wide range of life lessons for kids, and it does so without feeling heavy-handed. In the series, the character Gobo considers himself an explorer like his Uncle Traveling Matt, but what the show’s really exploring is life itself. It ties nicely into the “Explore, don’t preach” approach I explained previously.
Let’s look at one of the top-rate episodes on IMDb, “The Minstrels.” It came out in 1983, but like all best Fraggle episodes, it’s timeless. And the episode packs a lot into a pretty simple story.
A band of traveling minstrels visits Fraggle Rock. They’re led by a guru named Cantus (played by Jim Henson himself), and Cantus asks the Fraggles to perform the tradition of the Medley.
To prepare, each Fraggle is supposed to go off on their own and discover their own unique song, so that they can eventually come back together and combine their individual songs into a harmonious medley.
Red Fraggle, our protagonist of this particular episode, takes those instructions very literally. She’s looking all around her to figure out what her song is and where she might find it, looking everywhere but in her own head and heart. Meanwhile, her friends have already figured theirs out, just by taking some time to pause and look within and hear what was there.
Red soon starts to get pretty desperate, so desperate that she steals the minstrels’ magic flute in the hope that it will reveal her song to her. And, of course, things go horribly wrong when the flute rebels and drags her out to the Gorgs’ garden, where she nearly gets thumped by Junior Gorg.
The next day, Mokey is willing to take the blame for the theft rather than tell on Red, and this motivates Red to confess. And only after she demonstrates bravery and recovers the flute is she able to look within and truly listen in order to discover her song.
Along the way, we also get a postcard from Uncle Traveling Matt in which he believes mannequins are performing some advanced meditation technique. And Doc becomes obsessed with creating to most perfectly musical doorbell, which soon takes over his shop, almost like a twist on “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Like Red, Doc was focused entirely on external stimuli, causing himself great distress in the process.
So let’s think about all this. This simple story teaches kids about mindfulness, meditation, music, courage, stealing, and forgiveness, and yet it barely feels like it’s trying to teach, because everything is character-driven and consistently entertaining.
The episode never even mentions the term mindfulness. But it shows us how we can calm ourselves by taking a moment to check inward and breathe, and how external obsessions can lead us straight into trouble. Right from the beginning, we see Red wanting to be the first in the pool in the morning, and wanting to be the one named leader of the Medley. She’s already in a state of anxiousness, and it doesn’t end until she’s able to stop, breathe, and listen.
The episode also never lectures the kids at home about how stealing is wrong. Red already knew stealing was wrong, but she found a way to convince herself that it would be okay in this particular set of circumstances. And the episode clearly shows how wrong she was. We’re shown how she screwed up, and we’re shown how she’s still deserving of forgiveness.
With Fraggle Rock, the audience watches the characters learning from their mistakes. The characters don’t preach to the children watching at home. They don’t deliver any PSAs. Generally, a main character will make some kind of mistake and discover why they were wrong, not merely that they were wrong. The lessons are baked into the stories, and the stories stem from the characters.
Today’s kids can still learn a lot from Fraggle Rock. And so can today’s writers.
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