A Beary Good Time The New Series From The Jim Henson Co. Is Sure To Be A Delight For Parents And Kids Alike
Most TV hosts just say hello. This one gives the viewer a hello sniff.
“Wait a minute!” says Bear, catching a familiar scent as he greets you at the door. “Smells sweet! Kinda like honey!” His nose is pressed quizzically against your TV screen. Sniff, sniff, sniff.
“It’s YOU! YOU smell like HONEY! Or do you smell this sweet all the time?”
Flatterer. But there’s charm to spare from “Bear in the Big Blue House,” a Muppet-populated play space for preschoolers. This delightful new series from the Jim Henson Co. guarantees all comers a smell of a good time.
The star is Bear, a 7-foot champion of good cheer who shares his two-story Victorian with a mouse, bear cub, pair of purple otters and Dayglo-hued lemur.
Together they investigate a single theme in each episode - a birthday party, the arrival of autumn, the meaning of “home.” Then, come nightfall, Bear gazes skyward to reflect upon his day with Luna, the Woman in the Moon, and they sing a goodbye song.
“In a lot of ways, I think this is more like a storybook than a TV series,” says Mitchell Kriegman, “Bear’s” creator and executive producer who also masterminded “Clarissa Explains It All.” “We want a program that’s good for parents and kids to experience together, because it deals with things they all go through together.”
For instance, the pressing issue of a child’s lost belonging - which happens to be the theme of the episode being taped this day.
Kriegman says he wrote the script after his 3-year-old son misplaced a cherished blanket. “That can be a crisis,” he notes with a shudder - “a crisis parents and their kid share!”
Soon, Bear will perform a number called “Lost Thing.” But while the shot is readied, the upper half of Bear takes a break on its puppet rack.
Meanwhile, Bear’s puppeteer, Noel MacNeal, is clad in his harvest-gold Bear bottom and a T-shirt as he works out the scene’s steps. As he shuffles about the Blue House living room, he holds aloft his right hand (which soon will bring Bear’s face to life) as his fingers practice “mouthing” the song’s lyrics.
A cutup who resembles comedian Jon Stewart, MacNeal points out with pleasure that Bear isn’t like most animal characters, “who are human first, then an animal. Bear is back and forth. Yes, he owns a home. But he sniffs the camera lens and picks berries. He likes reading a good book, but he also likes swinging, eating food of all kinds and taking long naps.”
And MacNeal might have added that Bear (like his “Blue House” cohabitants) wears no clothes, opting instead for his furry altogether.
But why a bear, of all things, to run this busy household?
“It dawned on me that little kids see adults like bears,” Kriegman explains. “We’re these lumbering, clumsy creatures, not real quick, not that smart, walking around w-a-a-ay up here.”
So Bear really is a grown-up, however frolicsome. Not so much a playmate for the likes of Tutter the Mouse, Treelo the Lemur, and the other hand-puppets that Bear towers above, he is their genial caretaker.
“Yes, he is adultish,” MacNeal concedes with a grin. “But he’s still in touch with his inner cub.”
Bear nods.
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WHERE’S THE BEAR? “Bear in the Big Blue House” airs on cable’s Disney Channel weekdays at 10 a.m., and weekends at 7 and 7:30 a.m.