Trivia / Sesamstraat

• Character Outlives Actor: When actor Lex Goudsmit, who played the first "Grandfather" of Sesamstraat, passed away, he insisted in his will that all the sketches that were filmed before his death would still be broadcast, allowing the character to survive the death of the actor for a while.
• Creator-Preferred Adaptation: Jim Henson himself was so impressed with Paul Haenen and Wim T. Schippers' performances as Bert and Ernie respectively, that they are the only international performers for said characters to be allowed to write their own sketches for the show.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: The male Muppet Pino is performed and voiced by the female Renée Menschaar.
• The Danza: Almost all of the human characters use the same name their real-life actors have.
• No Export for You:
  • In a way: since Sesamstraat has its own version of Big Bird with Pino, the American Big Bird never appears in dubbed American inserts the way other Muppets do so as not to confuse the Dutch viewers. American storybooks translated into Dutch which featured Big Bird used to claim that he's simply Pino in his "yellow suit", but as of now, storybooks and dubbed American DVD releases that can't get around using Big Bird call him "Neef Jan" (Cousin John), making it clear that he's Pino's cousin.
  • Subverted with Caroll Spinney's other major Muppet, Oscar the Grouch. Most international productions don't use clips of Oscar as frequently for the same reasons as the lack of Big Bird (they have their own localized Grouches and don't want to confuse kids). However, Sesamstraat has no local Muppet Grouch (with some adult characters filling a similar role), meaning clips of Oscar still appear frequently. In particular, Oscar's song "Swamp Mushy Muddy" (known in Dutch as "Stinkie Stankie") is one of the most popular songs from the show.
• Screwed by the Network: Unfortunately, this is a little bit of a recurring issue in recent years:
  • The show is a frequent victim of schedule changes. During a majority of its run, Sesamstraat started just after dinnertime, coining the Dutch expression "First Sesamstraat and then to bed!". However, changes in schedule made it so that the show aired much earlier, at a time when most families were still eating. This caused the show to have a huge drop in ratings.
  • There is also much squabbling about which channel will broadcast the show. For a while it would look like Sesamstraat would move to a paid channel, rather than one of the easily accessible Dutch Public Broadcasting Service channels. According to long time actor Aart Staartjes (who's been playing the role of Mr. Aart since 1984), this would be a deathblow for the program, as it was already struggling with the constant schedule changes. He even threatened to quit his role, as he really didn't like all the squabbling happening because of it.
  • On December the 5th, 2011, the annual Sinterklaas episode was spontaneously cancelled because the live broadcast of a political debate was protracting. The network, not wanting to suddenly stop the debate, decided to cancel the Sinterklaas episode, which was originally scheduled to start after the debate. All the while millions of parents and children were waiting in front of their televisions for said episode to begin, in vain. This decision caused national outrage, with many angry Dutchmen, including several Dutch celebrities, voicing their displeasure on Twitter. The chief editor of Sesamstraat told the newspapers the cast and crew were absolutely livid by this decision, as the Sinterklaas episode takes up a lot of time and money to film, which was now flushed down the drain.
  • In 2019, it was announced that NTR would not produce new episodes of the show for the next two years (likely meaning the show has gone on hiatus), though the network will continue to broadcast reruns.

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