If you think of Sesame Street as merely that show with numbers, letters and Elmo, there’s a lot you don’t know about it.

The new documentary Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, which received a theatrical release on April 23rd to be followed by an on-demand release on May 7th explores the show’s origins, from the show’s inspiration to the death of Jim Henson in 1990. Using contemporary interviews with the show’s creators, their children and archival interview footage of those who have passed away, Street Gang tells the story of how this show, revolutionary in its mission and for its time, got on the air.

In late 1960s Joan Ganz Cooney, a socially conscious female television executive was working in the fledgling world of public television. She was asked by her friend Lloyd Morrisett Jr., from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and who specialized in the psychological studies of pre-school children, to take on revolutionary experiment. Cooney was tasked with creating a children’s show that would “master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them.”

Cooney knew through her research and from her experience with children, that the medium of television was very good at imprinting messages on the brains of children; with the vast amount of time children spent in front of the television (even in the 1960s, that was only surpassed by the time they spent asleep) their little brains were sponges soaking up ad jingles and slogans enabling them to repeat back perfectly.

Cooney wanted to utilize those repetitive ad techniques to inspire literacy in children, but there was something else important to her mission: reaching inner-city and low-income children, often left behind by the educational system that somehow wasn’t failing children in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods. Inspired by the civil rights movement, Joan and Lloyd believed in creating a show that served all children.

Cooney and the newly-formed Children’s Television Workshop brought together educators and television people to craft a show with a curriculum that was as informative as it was entertaining. Established children’s programming veteran Jon Stone was brought in to the fold, and his vision was crucial in developing the show into the monster hit it became. It was Stone who brought both Jim Henson and his Muppets and songwriter Joe Raposo to the attention of CTW.

In a departure from the usual kids’ show interior settings, like a clubhouse or school-room, Stone drew inspiration from the streets of New York and decided that the show should be set in an inner-city neighborhood, to make their intended viewers feel at home.

Street Gang chronicles in exhaustive (but not boring!) details that went into the making the show that became both incredibly popular and controversial. Shortly after its inception, stars and monsters went on the first Sesame Street Live tour to select cities, creating an atmosphere that the original Gordon, Matthew Robinson, likened to Woodstock.

At the same time, public TV outlets in Missisippi declined to carry the show at all, and the movie has no problem implying that racism against the multi-cultural cast – virtually unheard of in 1969 – was behind it. It was only after commercial TV stations in the state started running the show (and notching terrific ratings) that the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television relented and allowed the public television stations to run the show.

Street Gang is wonderful; one minute viewers are weeping along with cast members as they try to explain to Big Bird that Mr. Hooper died and the next the movie presents gut-bustlingly funny outtakes with swearing Muppets. It’s a deeper look at the beloved show than ABC’s recent special Sesame Street: 50 Years of Sunny Days, because its focus is more on the show’s origins than an overview of its entire history.

The movie relies more on interview footage rather than show clips, but through the eyes of its creators, Street Gang allows you to fall in love all over again with your beloved childhood companion, Sesame Street.