Silly Creatures

In this era of remakes, reboots, and sequels, it’s hard to imagine that any 1980s franchises have yet to be revived. But when Apple TV+ executives began building a children’s programming lineup after the streaming service launched in 2019, they identified an ignored corner of the Jim Henson universe: Fraggle Rock.

The Fraggles, Doozers, and Gorgs of Fraggle Rock may not have the name recognition of Henson’s more famous Muppets, like Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, but they developed a cult following during the show’s five-season run on HBO in the mid-1980s. In the world of Fraggle Rock, Fraggles, Doozers, and Gorgs live just out of sight of the Silly Creatures (humans). Their adventures unfold in a series of caves located through a hole in the wall of a human’s house. The colorful, jovial creatures eat radishes, explore, and often break out in song.

To bring the show into the 21st century, Apple TV+ and the Jim Henson Company chose a pair of BU alumni: Alex Cuthbertson (’98, COM’02) and Matt Fusfeld (COM’01). The two met at BU, collaborating for the first time as members of a sketch comedy group. “He and I had a natural ability to build off of one another,” Cuthbertson says. “Matt would say something that I would find funny and I’d add to it. We had a very natural partnership cadence.” They teamed up again early in their careers and have written and produced together ever since. With Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, they took their first shot at showrunning a series—and delivered rave reviews.

Season one premiered in January 2022 and boasts a 100-percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The San Francisco Chronicle called it “delightfully low-tech” and “wonderfully uncynical.” The Los Angeles Times said that “everything works.” The show’s second season earned the duo a 2025 Children’s and Family Emmy for Outstanding Children’s or Family Viewing Series.

Now Cuthbertson and Fusfeld are working on their next act, writing movie scripts, pitching series ideas, and—they hope—returning to Fraggle Rock.

The Road to Fraggle Rock

Twenty-five years after their BU sketch comedy group made the rounds at Boston’s open-mic nights, Cuthbertson—a Californian living in New York—and Fusfeld—a New Yorker based in California—have moved their collaboration to the computer screen. They spend the work day on Zoom and in Google Docs hashing out scripts and pitches together. Sometimes they’ll pop on headphones and walk around their respective cities while chatting. “A couple months ago we were talking through a movie idea,” Cuthbertson says. “By the end of the day, I’d walked 16 miles and gone across the Brooklyn Bridge and back across the Manhattan Bridge.”

During their 18-year partnership, they’ve written television scripts for American Dad!, Community, and New Girl and tallied a series of producing credits. But Fraggle Rock was a new sort of opportunity. The two shared a childhood obsession with The Muppets Take Manhattan, the 1984 film directed by Frank Oz. “It was seminal,” says Fusfeld. They’d even developed a Muppets project for ABC that was never produced, so the invitation to visit the Henson lot in 2019 to discuss reviving Fraggle Rock was, in many ways, a dream come true.

“There’s such a culture to the Henson community—[Henson’s] ethos of fun and play and ‘the best idea wins,’” says Fusfeld. “It’s a very interesting, passionate group of people who are true artisans.”

They were careful to stay true to that legacy in their pitch. “We thought there was an opportunity to reintroduce people to Fraggle Rock, to the vibe and to these great characters—and do the show for a modern audience,” Cuthbertson says. “And that’s what they wanted to hear.”

To help the showrunners capture the spirit of Fraggle Rock, the Henson team brought together some of the original writers, puppeteers, and production designers for what they dubbed the Fraggle Gaggle. Puppet designer and performer Dave Goelz and writer Jocelyn Stevenson were among those from the 1980s show who joined the new cast and crew.

The show grapples with timely themes amid the goofiness. The Fraggles deal with a vanishing water supply in one episode. In another episode, one of the Fraggle’s trusts her intuition over the facts and gets lost—ending up in a literal echo chamber. . Cuthbertson and Fusfeld tried to pick up the pacing of the show and tied the first season together with an overarching storyline, linking the microplastics research of Doc—the human who lives above the caves—to environmental impacts being felt by the Fraggles below. Even with those modern touches, Fraggle Rock retains its 1980s vibe with its sitcom-like structure and song-and-dance numbers.

The show is a throwback in another way: It uses almost no computer-generated effects. What you see onscreen are puppets, controlled by humans, navigating physical sets.

Working with those limitations and within the existing Henson universe could have been limiting. Not for these showrunners. “Constraints make you creative and force you to buckle down. It can focus your energy,” says Cuthbertson.

Two-For-One Special

Cuthbertson and Fusfeld have worked together for so long now they can’t imagine going solo. “We are basically two-for-one,” Cuthbertson says. “The gamble that we had to take is, we have to work twice as much.”

“You’re doubling your network, doubling your output,” Fusfeld adds.

That means their world extends well beyond Fraggle Rock these days. They wrote for a show coming to Apple TV+ later this year and have several television and movie projects in varying stages of development.

They also hope to continue working in the Henson universe. A Fraggle Rock holiday special is in production for later this year, and they have ideas for a third season and a feature film that they hope Apple TV+ will green light.

“There’s a legacy of supporting artistry and craft and there’s a lot of loyalty within the Henson Company,” Cuthbertson says. “There’s a continuum that we’re lucky to be a part of.”