40 Years of Sunny Days DVD 2009

This retrospective 2 disc set is certainly an enjoyable romp through Sesame Street history, filled with nice memories.

Disc 1 covers the period 1969-1989, or Seasons 1-20, and Disc 2 contains material bringing us into the more modern era, with songs, sketches and clips from Seasons 21-40, going right up to 2009.

Though Sesame Street repeated lots of its' content over the years (the reason why a high number of earlier sketches are so familiar to me) in actual episodes, my "period" that I watched the show was probably from the late 1980's and into the 90's. On the 1st disc in particular I loved Kermit's famous, poignant song about discrimination "Bein' Green", Bert and Ernie's hilarious skits, and the clip with a little girl colouring in a picture of a butterfly, blending into a film about how crayons are made. I also was pleased to recall the particular song We All Sing With the Same Voice (My Name is You), such a charming piece celebrating diversity that shows how children can come from diverse backgrounds or live differently, and yet still be very similar.

Also the Peanut Butter Factory song (by Joe Raposo) was a real memory jogger and I loved the groovy "Put Down the Duckie" song (the version appearing here features celebrities including Jeremy Irons and Danny Devito, but one was also filmed without them). The amount of famous faces on display in the show is striking with Diana Ross, James Taylor, Robert Deniro, Tony Bennett and Alicia Keys making appearances over the course of the set.

What was special about Sesame Street for me was it seemed to appeal to those older than its intended audience as well as young children, with its' excellent characters, music and humour.

One clip included here that I hadn't seen, before watching this set (perhaps surprisingly), is a famous one where Big Bird is handing out pictures of the cast (these were actually drawn by a cartoonist) for everyone including Mr. Hooper (Will Lee) but Big Bird says of Mr. Hooper's picture, "Well, I'll give it to him when he comes back".

Tearfully, Bob (Bob McGrath) and the gang explain that Mr. Hooper has died and is never coming back. The emotion in this clip is completely genuine, very moving but also hard to watch, as I could see the tears in his eyes and the sadness in his voice. This was an incredibly brave move for a children's show, explaining a dark subject (dealing with the loss of a loved one) in a sensitive way, yet being truthful - in fact the shooting of the scene coincided with the actual death of actor Will Lee.
I also remembered the sweet scene from the 20th season where Maria had her baby very well (this is present on the end of the 1st disc). In fact, around that time, Sonia Manzano had been pregnant with her real life daughter, so that had been written into the programme.
Despite the criticism that the 2nd disc seems to spend too long on the show's recent history in my view (most of the material seems to cover the past 10 years or so, which I don't remember being shown on TV and besides, I was getting older!) there's still some enjoyable segments, like Grover's Monster in the Mirror song early on, and later, fine song parodies by the Spin Doctors (Two Princes), Tony Bennett (a lovely take on Fly Me to The Moon), Feist (a version of 1,2,3,4), and Alicia Keys (she performs a clever spoof of her hit, Fallin' in a skit with Elmo, which is a new one for me).

The DVD transfer is not too bad, considering some of the materials age and varying condition (I guess it was taken from old film or NTSC tape).

I felt the spread of clips could have been improved, perhaps explaining exactly which ones were from which Season if you select the "Play All" option (they are introduced by The Count character, simply as "Seasons 1 through 5", "Seasons 6 through 10", etc with each block of segments following). There is a "select a segment" option in the menus however.

Also, some of the clips on Disc 1 have already been seen before on other Old School sets (Rubber Duckie, Roosevelt Franklin, Bein' Green etc) but I suppose this is inevitable, both given the repetition of the segments in show broadcasts, and not forgetting that the notion of what is considered a "classic clip" among fans is subjective. There is so much material though to draw on, you can't help feeling they could have cast their net a bit wider.

I wish there had been more Ernie and Bert and Grover the Waiter skits, music parodies on the 1st disc, and retrospective matter personally, but you can't have everything.

The extra features on offer include a Trivia track (present on both discs), Behind the Scenes clips and interviews which are fairly interesting (not to mention sobering considering some of the writers or cast featured in vintage footage have now passed away), a clip which was voted "Fan Favourite" in a poll and a "TV montage" (flash clips from each season on the disc playing on a TV screen) which is in actuality a pretty pointless extra, since this can also be seen when you insert the DVD on start-up).

Additionally, a special booklet is included in the set with trivia and behind the scenes information, which is nicely presented.

Overall this is a really nice set for Sesame Street fans even if one can argue til the cows come home that "this or that" should have been included. I hope this leads to more full episodes being released on DVD.