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From the moment the music cranks up and the high-kicking chorus line slides onto the stage, The Muppet Show transports you back to your childhood, cross-legged, wide-eyed, in front of a television show which mashed up Broadway music, historic poetry, Muppet puppetry and guest stars like Steve Martin, Shirley Bassey and the cast of Star Wars.
The “most sensational inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational” TV show in pop culture history, it has long been missing from the virtual shelves of the streaming era but this week, finally, staked some shelf space between The Mandalorian and WandaVision on Disney+.
Sensational inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational … The Muppet Show.Credit:Disney+
This time around, The Muppet Show comes with a caveat: a viewer advisory which is now carried on some episodes – 18 in total – which warns of “negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures”. The advisory plays for 12 seconds and cannot be skipped using the remote control.
“These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” the statement from US studio Disney reads. “Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it, and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together. Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe.”
The Muppet Show, created by iconic puppeteer Jim Henson and filmed at Elstree Studios in the UK, was a staple of late 1970s and early 1980s television. Each episode featured celebrity guest stars – John Cleese, Roger Moore, Shirley Bassey, Debbie Harry, John Denver, Julie Andrews and many others – and recurring sketches.
Those memorable sketches included Pigs in Space, a Star Trek parody featuring Captain Link Hogthrob, Dr Julius Strangepork and “first mate” Miss Piggy, Muppet Laboratories, in which Dr Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker invariably blew something up, and Veterinarian’s Hospital, a General Hospital send-up featuring Dr Bob (Rowlf the Dog), Nurse Piggy and Nurse Janice.
Statler and Waldorf heckle Fozzie Bear on stage in The Muppet Show.Credit:Disney+
The series, set in the Benny Vandergast Memorial Theatre, owned by gofer Scooter’s uncle J.P. Grosse, is largely largely remembered for its Muppet stars: Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Rowlf the Dog, Gonzo, the Swedish Chef and house band Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem whose most-loved member was drummer Animal.
But the show also boasted an incredibly detailed supporting cast: George the Janitor and wardrobe lady Hilda, Rizzo the rat, patriotic (and arch-conservative) Sam Eagle and persistent audience hecklers Statler and Waldorf (and in one episode, Waldorf’s wife, Astoria). In some respects, revisiting them as as joyful as revisiting the show’s “stars”.
What you discover when you go back is that it came from humble beginnings: the two opening kick-lines were mostly not even famous Muppets: just band singer Janice (in a wig), Miss Piggy, a couple of Muppet monsters referred to as Frackles, a generic Muppet (referred to by the production as Whatnot) and an unnamed male pig.
The show’s opening titles are now legendary, and the lyrics spill from the tongue with ease, recorded into cellular memory at an age when such memorisation was easy. It’s time to play the music / it’s time to light the lights / it’s time to meet the Muppets on The Muppet Show tonight. / It’s time to put on makeup / it’s time to dress up right/ it’s time to raise the curtain on The Muppet Show tonight.
Florence Henderson sings Happy Together with a group of Frackles on The Muppet Show.Credit:Disney+
“Why do we always come here?” asks box-seated heckler Waldorf. “I guess we’ll never know,” replies his box-mate Statler. “It’s like a kind of torture,” says Waldorf, before they both finish: “To have to watch the show.”
In truth, rewatching The Muppet Show is anything but torture. It’s like a walk through an old neighbourhood, looking at things you remember, things you don’t remember and things that, because of the funny tricks of time and memory, aren’t quite what you thought they were.
It’s very funny. It’s unexpectedly more artful than you remember. And sometimes it’s just brilliantly absurd, such as when Animal sings from the Gershwin play-book, Kermit sings Lydia the Tattooed Lady or Elton John sings Crocodile Rock with a chorus of Muppet crocodiles. There are great musical moments, such as Julie Andrews singing The Lonely Goatherd from The Sound of Music, and the cast singing There’s No Business Like Show Business.
What a duet for a girl and goatherd … Julie Andrews recreates The Sound of Music on The Muppet Show.Credit:Disney+
And at times it’s just plain problematic. Hence the viewer advisory. Most of the episodes which carry the disclaimer contain inappropriate or outdated cultural references, such as A Gypsy’s Violin (in the Peter Sellers episode), a Salute to Japan segment (in the James Coburn episode) and a performance of It’s a Small World (with problems too numerous to list). In the Johnny Cash episode, the Confederate battle flag is prominently displayed.
Some episodes have had whole musical numbers cut from them, mostly because the musical rights could not be secured, a recurring problem for music-rich shows in studio libraries. (Great example: The Wonder Years.) They include They Call the Wind Maria, There’s a New Sound, Down at the Old Bull and Bush, Bird Walk and, ironically, Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street, the title song of another Muppet series, Sesame Street.
There are two whole episodes missing: one, featuring guest star Brooke Shields, and another, featuring British comedy actor/writer Chris Langham. The Shields episode is likely missing as it featured music from Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, while the Langham episode is likely missing because Langham, who was a staff writer on the show when it was filmed, was found guilty of possessing child pornography in 2007 and jailed.
Kermit the Frog and Debbie Harry sing The Rainbow Connection on The Muppet Show.Credit:Disney+
The enduring power of The Muppet Show is that it does not talk down to its audience, even now. As much as it dished up the chaotic comedy of the Muppets, it also introduced young ears to Boccherini’s String Quintet in E Major, the Pizzicato from the ballet Sylvia and the opera Don Giovanni, even if it was rather porkly performed by Miss Piggy and Link Hogthrob.
Some moments are pure camp, such as Liza Minnelli performing a noir thriller version of Copacabana which ended up winning the Raven award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1980, for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of fiction writing. Other notable winners: Alfred Hitchcock (1960) and Steven Bochco (1999).
The show also has, for a puppet series, moments of great humanity. The complexities of Piggy’s (and least initially ) unrequited love for Kermit. Fozzie Bear’s deep anxieties about the mediocrity of his stage comedy (and Statler and Waldorf’s mercilessly persistent reminding him of that fact). And the existential art-versus-commerce struggle which keeps the Muppet Theatre on the brink of closure for much of its life.
But the most memorable moments are pure Muppet. Such as Princess Piggy trying to woo Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in a Muppets-Star Wars crossover which, in 1980, was a strange prediction of the Disney-Lucasfilm merger three (and a bit) decades later. Or the Muppet version of Piero Umiliani’s Mah Nà Mah Nà, first used on Sesame Street in 1969 but re-staged magnificently here in 1977.
And what endures more than anything is Kermit and Debbie Harry singing his signature song, and perhaps the greatest Muppet song ever, The Rainbow Connection, which featured in The Muppet Movie in 1979. Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection / the lovers, the dreamers and me. / All of us under its spell. We know that it’s probably magic.
The Muppet Show
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