About the Show

The television show

Fraggle Rock made its debut on January 10, 1983 and the final episode aired on March 30, 1987 — after four seasons and a total of 96 episodes. A co-production between former British television company Television South (TVS), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, United States pay-television service Home Box Office and Henson Associates (now Jim Henson Productions), the show was filmed on a Toronto sound stage, (later at Elstree Studios, London). Acclaimed avant-garde poet bpNichol worked as one of the show’s writers. In the early days of development, the script called Fraggles “Woozles” pending the devising of a more suitable name.

International co-productions

The producers made the series with the intention of it airing in various forms internationally. That concept grew out of Duncan Kenworthy’s experience adapting Sesame Street to the requirements of foreign markets.[1] The human “wraparound” segments were shot separately for each nation, so that the child viewer could always relate to the world of the program. However, in the Australian, New Zealand, Dutch, Irish, Scandinavian, Spanish and Eastern European shows the North American human surroundings were used. The series has appeared now in over ten countries and languages.

The British version presents Fraggle Rock as a rocky sea-island with a lighthouse; it used as an actual shown location St. Anthony’s Lighthouse located near Falmouth in Cornwall. The wraparounds featuring the inventor “Doc” (Gerard Parkes) in North America are replaced in the UK by the character called “The Captain” (played by Fulton Mackay, and after Mackay’s death by first John Gordon Sinclair as “PK” and later Simon O’Brien as “BJ”) who lives in the lighthouse along with his faithful dog Sprocket, who sometimes sees the Fraggles but never seems to get his owner’s attention in time. The rock is known as Fraggle Rock by the humans. In the German version, the action takes place beneath the workshop of the inventor Doc, played by Hans-Helmut Dickow. In France, the wraparound segments take place in a bakery.

Michael Frith (Jim Henson’s creative director) took inspiration for the setting of Fraggle Rock from the Crystal Caves in Bermuda, known during his childhood in Bermuda.

******Courtesy of Wikipedia- Link to info*******