The Official Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood YouTube Channel Goes Live: Watch Complete Episodes, Including the Very First

A great many, and per­haps the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans now between their late twen­ties and ear­ly six­ties, have spent time in Mis­ter Rogers’ neigh­bor­hood. My own peri­od of reg­u­lar vis­i­ta­tion would have been in the nine­teen-eight­ies, a decade when Fred Rogers intro­duced his preschool-age view­ers to guest stars from Lou Fer­rig­no, in and out of Incred­i­ble Hulk make­up, to a ten-year-old boy with spina bifi­da. He also took on geopo­lit­i­cal issues, up to and includ­ing mutu­al­ly assured nuclear destruc­tion, and social ones, as on the mem­o­rable “divorce week” of 1981. Such top­i­cal broad­casts were mixed in with re-runs pro­duced as far back as 1969, the year Mis­ter Rogers got the coun­try’s atten­tion by invit­ing Offi­cer Clem­mons to share his wad­ing pool.

What those of us then tun­ing in did­n’t see was any­thing from the first, black-and-white sea­son of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, which com­prised an aston­ish­ing 130 episodes that aired in 1968 alone. You can watch the series pre­miere at the top of the post, just recent­ly uploaded onto the show’s new offi­cial chan­nel.

It may come as a shock to see a 39-year-old Mis­ter Rogers, whom most of us remem­ber as the embod­i­ment of avun­cu­lar­i­ty or even grand­fa­ther­li­ness. But what’s even more strik­ing, if unsur­pris­ing, is that his onscreen per­sona, with its dis­in­cli­na­tion to talk down to chil­dren, nev­er real­ly changed. That sure­ly owes to its appar­ent iden­ti­ty with his off­screen per­sona: as he liked to put it, “kids can spot a pho­ny a mile away.”

“Aside from clips and com­pi­la­tions,” writes the New York Times’ Sopan Deb, “the chan­nel will make a selec­tion of full-length episodes avail­able glob­al­ly for the first time as well as some that haven’t aired in sev­er­al decades on PBS sta­tions.” With the show’s 60th anniver­sary com­ing up the year after next, the time does seem right to make as many of its 895 episodes as pos­si­ble avail­able to a new gen­er­a­tion. As of now, the chan­nel also offers the episodes with Offi­cer Clem­mons and the pool, Koko the Goril­la, and the mes­mer­iz­ing look inside the cray­on fac­to­ry. There’s even the crossover between Mis­ter Rogers and Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy from 1997, by which time the lat­ter had become a tele­vi­sion icon to us mil­len­ni­als. Though we prob­a­bly did­n’t catch his vis­it at the time, we can now keep it book­marked to show our own kids — assum­ing they don’t dis­cov­er it first.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Mr. Rogers’ Nine Rules for Speak­ing to Chil­dren (1977)

Mis­ter Rogers Cre­ates a Prime Time TV Spe­cial to Help Par­ents Talk to Their Chil­dren About the Assas­si­na­tion of Robert F. Kennedy (1968)

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Mis­ter Rogers Accepts a Life­time Achieve­ment Award, and Helps You Thank Every­one Who Has Made a Dif­fer­ence in Your Life

Watch the First Episode of Sesame Street and 140 Oth­er Free Episodes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.