Free Thinking

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Sesame Street and Soviet culture

Sesame Street and Soviet culture

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Sesame Street and Soviet culture

Anne McElvoy on Russian punk protest and a version of US TV's Big Bird, Bert and Ernie.

How do you translate a hit American kids TV series to a post-Soviet Russia negotiating its identity and navigating what media freedom might mean or not? Anne McElvoy finds out.

Muppets in Moscow is Natasha Lance Rogoff's account of launching a Russian version of the American tv series Sesame Street.  If a single announcer supplies the dialogue dubbing when a foreign film is shown in Russia where do you find the technical skills you need? Should you feature exclusively ethnically Russian actors or include nationalities from former Soviet republics?  What puppets from Russian folklore might be suitable and what kind of education for children are you trying to achieve?  Anne McElvoy asks Natasha about how she found the answers to these questions and how that period of Russian TV differs from the media landscape there today. 

Plus New Generation Thinker Victoria Donovan looks at punk protest and films such as Little Vera (1988); Lucy Weir traces the ways in which art and music responded to the era of Perestroika and beyond; and, Tamar Koplatadze explores how literature from across the former republics of the USSR is beginning to process the Soviet past. 

Producer: Ruth Watts

Natasha Lance Rogoff is appearing at Jewish Book Week 2023 which runs at Kings Place in London until March 5th.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Free Thinking

Sesame Street and Soviet culture

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3