Everyone knows about Kermit, Miss Piggy, Scooter, Beaker, and Bunsen. But what about Clifford, Digit, or Dougie Colon? Remember them? While the original Muppet Show and its iconic cast are fondly recalled by those who watched during its original airing or caught the show in subsequent years, far fewer people know the show went through no less than three revival attempts in the decades since. Most of them have been lost to pop culture's very short attention span.
While The Muppet Show was a success—spawning not only a movie series but also spinoffs like Muppet Babies—shows like MuppeTelevision and Muppets Tonight disappeared almost without trace, barely remembered and only rarely referenced in Muppet lore. (Hey, it's not easy on the little screen.) In anticipation of today's release of Muppets Most Wanted, here's a primer on what you missed on those bygone shows.
MuppeTelevision
Strictly speaking, MuppeTelevision wasn't a stand-alone show. Instead, it was one of a number of recurring strands on the short-lived Jim Henson Hour, which aired on NBC for just one season in 1989. It updated the basic Muppet Show format for the 1980s and replaced the theater with a television station and—heresy!—some muppets with CGI characters.
The result lacked a lot of the spontaneity and frenetic nature of the Muppet Show, with characters like Digit and Vicki appearing flat and dull compared to Kermit, and ultimately didn't hit the right notes. It was a break from what had come before, but perhaps too much of a break for everyone's comfort.
Muppets Tonight
In contrast to MuppeTelevision, 1996's Muppets Tonight was almost a clone of the original Muppet Show format, with celebrity guests dropping by what was, in this incarnation, a live TV show to participate in sketches and maybe a song or two while chaos reigns backstage.
Muppets Tonight brought back many characters from the original series. But the central cast was relatively new, if not entirely original. (The exception was Kermit, who served as show producer instead of host, with Clifford taking over that role.) If Muppets Tonight is remembered for anything, it might be that it was the program where Pepe the Prawn really came into his own. But really, very little compares to the double act of Johnny Fiama and his monkey, Sal.
It wasn't just old characters and situations that Muppets Tonight gleefully resurrected. Old jokes and entire sketches made their way back to the air, although whether or not that's a result of creative recycling or that week's guest wanting to relive their childhoods remains unknown. After all, can you really begrudge Sandra Bullock for wanting to do this sketch?
Despite being, for all intents, a straight (and decent) revival of the Muppet Show, Muppets Tonight was cancelled after two seasons on ABC, although it would later survive five years in re-runs on the Disney Channel. Perhaps it was just ahead of its time.
That Puppet Game Show
Okay, an admission. Officially, That Puppet Game Show isn't really a Muppet show. The clue is right there in the title—or, rather, not there, with the word "puppet" instead of "muppet." Nonetheless, this collaboration between the BBC and the Jim Henson Company is the Muppets in all the ways that matter.
The program spun out of a series of live improv shows created by Brian Henson (son of Jim) called Puppet Up! and was essentially a mix of a traditional British Saturday evening game show (albeit one with celebrity guests) and the Muppet Show's backstage drama and skits. The game show aspects themselves also had a particularly off-kilter, Muppet quality to them. For example, the Scottish hot dogs that like to sing songs by the Proclaimers.
The series debuted last fall on the BBC, but was cancelled due to low ratings with only eight episodes making it to air. Perhaps British audiences weren't quite ready to see the peanut butter of Muppets mix with the chocolate of undemanding game shows just yet, or maybe the Muppets' television career only really works when Kermit, Fozzie and Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem show up every week.
But really, it's hard to argue that most television shows don't need a little bit more Animal when it comes right down to it.
