Critic Reviews

Every episode has songs and life lessons aplenty for the kids, but the lure of nostalgia coupled with clever writing — and guest voices from stars like Ed Helms, Patti LaBelle and Oakland’s Daveed Diggs — is just as likely to engage the grown-ups, allowing them to set aside their worries for another day.

Everything works. ... The textures are palpable. The Fraggles and Fraggle Rock are evidently handmade and at the same time actual and alive — something you could become part of, could make yourself, potentially. It prickles the mind.

They will always retain a special kind of magic, the original Fraggle Rock included, that no one can recreate. But Back to the Rock is a loving, worthy reminder that there is joy to be found in everyday life, even when things seem hard.

A charming, inventive, and most welcome revival of a deserving and underserved franchise that in its leveraging of the original’s timeless qualities creates the foundation for another generation to grow up wishing they were able to dance their cares away, sneakily learning a lot in the process.

Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock is a revival that recaptures the magic of the original and gently pushes the show into a more serialized style of storytelling—one that invigorates and makes more potent the messages threaded into the spine of this 13-episode season.

The songs are captivating, the tone joyously chaotic, the puppets gloriously squishy and largely free of distracting digital effects. This is a furry fantasia that has stood the test of time. And viewers young and old alike are sure to get a thrill throwing themselves into its velvety embrace.

It’s exuberant, inventive, wholesome without being cloying, and a good deal better quality than many things to be found on Netflix and YouTube. Introduce this show to the children in your life.

Fraggle Rock: Back To The Rock has all the charm that made the original series so popular, and it’s made in a way that it’s completely easy to make a new generation of fans get into the show immediately.