Play with Me Sesame

Play with Me Sesame is an American children's television series created by Sesame Workshop and Nickelodeon for their former joint venture Noggin. It is a spin-off of the long-running and iconic children's television series Sesame Street. The series' backgrounds and animated elements were made by Nickelodeon in New York City. Nickelodeon and Sesame developed the show to expand on Sesame Street by directly encouraging young viewers to interact with the characters. To do this, they combined classic Sesame Street footage with new segments, where hosts Ernie, Grover, Bert, and Prairie Dawn invite preschoolers to join them in games with Elmo's replacements.

The first two seasons were produced for Noggin. Season 1, containing 26 episodes, premiered on April 1, 2002; in the same season, Season 2, which premiered on June 7, 2003, contained 17 last episodes; Cookie Monster, Ernestine, Slimey, and Zoe also started making occasional appearances on the show. Chicago the Lion also made at least one appearance. Season 3 was produced solely by Sesame Workshop and was made in international countries in 2007 as a copyright date.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) It removes most of the charm that made its parent show great and memorable.
 * 2) Unlike in Sesame Street (where the characters often lectured the audience on various topics whenever they broke the fourth wall or welcomed them to Sesame Street), the fourth wall is broken constantly to the point of annoyance.
 * 3) The only Muppets from Sesame Street that appear in this show are Ernie, Bert, Prairie Dawn and Grover, with Cookie Monster and Zoe as supporting characters, and the rest of the Sesame Street Muppets (including Big Bird, Elmo and Abby Cadabby) are ignored.
 * 4) Ernie, Bert, Prairie Dawn and Grover have all been flanderized to treat the audience like Elmo does in Elmo's World, along with Barney the Dinosaur, Joe from the later Blue's Clues episodes (as the main host), Blue from Blue's Room, Kermit the Frog from The Muppets, Dora the Explorer, Diego from Go, Diego, Go!, the Teletubbies, the Tweenies, the narrators and puppets from Baby Einstein, the Little Einsteins, JoJo from JoJo's Circus, the Sensational Six from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Darby from My Friends Tigger & Pooh, and Pinky Dinky Doo do. They're also a lot more loud and obnoxious than they are in Sesame Street.
 * 5) The voice acting is more annoying than it was in Sesame Street, as Grover, Ernie, Bert, and Prairie often yell or scream most of their lines.
 * 6) Unlike Sesame Street and most other preschool shows, Play with Me Sesame barely has any educational value. While it does try to teach kids to play and sing along as well as develop their kinesthetic skills, it mostly turns down to the hosts just doing uninteresting, stupid, annoying, and unfunny things.
 * 7) The humor is unfunny, cringeworthy, and tame.
 * 8) The show is way too predictable, as every episode is structured as follows:
 * 9) *The Noggin Version
 * 10) **Ernie Says
 * 11) **Classic Muppet clip
 * 12) **Prairie Dawn showcases drawings made by kids
 * 13) **Classic Muppet clip
 * 14) **Bert plays on the computer
 * 15) **Classic Muppet clip (a song segment)
 * 16) **Classic Muppet clip (an Ernie and Bert segment)
 * 17) **Grover invites the viewer to dance with him
 * 18) *The Non-American Version
 * 19) **Ernie welcomes to the show and it's playtime (exclusively to season three)
 * 20) **Classic Muppet clip
 * 21) ***"Monsterpiece Theatre"
 * 22) **Prairie Dawn sings and dances (exclusively to season three)
 * 23) **Classic Muppet clip
 * 24) ***"Journey to Ernie"
 * 25) **Bert plays on the computer
 * 26) **Classic Muppet clip (a song segment)
 * 27) ***"Hero Guy"
 * 28) **Classic Muppet clip (an Ernie and Bert segment)
 * 29) **Grover tries to dance along with a six-part sequence; except for Prairie Dawn. But in "Dancing Shoes" and the season 3 finale by episode 26, Grover, Ernie and Prairie Dawn was done by saying goodbye, and Bert was out of breath and coughing up blood as the children of the audience cheered.
 * 30) The music, especially the theme song, is mediocre.
 * 31) The classic Sesame Street sketches, while good, serve much less of a purpose here than they do in the main show.
 * 32) Quantity Over Quality: Neither Sesame Workshop nor Noggin ran the show properly, as all 130 episodes of the show were made in the littlest of time possible, hence making the episodes feel poorly-executed and extremely rushed.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Great voice acting and puppeteering for all of the characters.
 * 2) As mentioned above, the classic Sesame Street sketches are featured in this show and they're great as always from seasons 1 to 30 in American Noggin airings.
 * 3) It encourages kids to play along with the Muppets while developing their gross motor skills.
 * 4) *The children were looking good voice-over the audience in the international versions.

International

 * United Kingdom: "Play with Me Sesame" (2004)

Reception
Play with Me Sesame currently holds a 6.1/10 on IMDb.