Monsterpiece Theater



Monsterpiece Theater is a recurring Sesame Street sketch hosted by Cookie Monster as Alistair Cookie.

The sketch is a parody of the PBS program, Masterpiece Theater, hosted by Alistair Cooke.

Here is a guide for various Monsterpiece theater segments:


 * "Upstairs, Downstairs"
 * Grover runs up and down a flight of stairs (look for a picture of Dr. Teeth on the wall).
 * Inspired by: the Bristish television series of the same name.


 * "Me, Claudius"
 * Several monsters fight over which one is Claudius.
 * Inspired by: I, Claudius by Robert Graves
 * (Includes an appearance by the monster who would later become Elmo)


 * "Chariots of Fur"
 * Grover and Herry Monster have a race.
 * Inspired by: the film Chariots of Fire


 * "The Old Man and the C"
 * Grover is playing an old man on a row boat, which is on a giant letter C.
 * Inspired by: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway


 * "The Sound of Music"
 * Grover is sitting on a hill, which moves to the sound of music.
 * Inspired by: the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical


 * "The Taming of The Shoe"
 * Grover is accompanied by a talking shoe.
 * Inspired by: The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare


 * "39 Stairs"
 * Grover climbs 39 stairs to see what is at the top, and ends up being dissapointed with the results.
 * Inspired by: the Alfred Hitchcock film, The 39 Steps


 * "One Flew Over The Cukoos Nest"
 * The number one keeps flying over the wrong things.
 * Inspired by: the Ken Kesey novel of the same name


 * "Gone With The Wind"
 * Kermit and a girl are in a windy room. They decide to demonstrate subtraction by giving in to the wind.
 * Inspired by: the Margaret Mitchell novel of the same name


 * "Guys And Dolls"
 * Herry Monster sings about how he likes to play with dolls, and Ruby sings about how she likes to play with trucks.
 * Inspired by: the Frank Loesser musical of the same name


 * "Twin Beaks"
 * Cookie Monster get's to star in this tale, in which he is a detective in a town where everybody has two beaks.
 * Inspired by: the 1980's television series Twin Peaks.


 * "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," starring Ricardo Monsterban
 * The Forty Thieves insist that they be counted, but by the time the counting is finished, the show has run out of time.
 * Inspired by: the story of the same name from the Thousand and One Nights


 * "The King And I"
 * Grover plays a king who dances with the letter I.
 * Inspired by: the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of the same name


 * "Waiting For Elmo"
 * Inspired by: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett


 * "Fiddler On The Roof"
 * A farmer and his daughters sing about "Addition," which involves putting one fiddler on the roof after another.
 * Inspired by: the Stein/Bock/Harnick musical of the same name


 * "Dances With Wolves"
 * A pig dances with a wolf.
 * Inspired by: the Kevin Costner film of the same name


 * "Hamlet"
 * Mel Gibson plays Hamlet, who keeps repeating "words, words, words", but Elmo can't read, so he only looks at "pictures, pictures, pictures".
 * Inspired by: the William Shakespeare tragedy of the same name


 * "12 Angry Men"
 * Inspired by: the film of the same name


 * "Monster in a Box"
 * A small monster does anything wrong with a box.


 * "Cyranose DeBergerac"
 * A poet with a two-foot long nose tries to help the queen of France finish her poem. Unfortunately, the word used to finish it is the word he's the most sensitive to: "nose."  One mention of that word and he'll go medieval on you!
 * Inspired by: Cyrano de Bergerac