Television
Recaps & Reviews
Review: The Muppet Show (2026)
Filed under: Recaps & Reviews
For many of a certain age, the Muppets are a fixture of our youth. The Muppet Show was a show we watched with our parents where we heard jokes that we both laughed at, their movies taught us about friendship, and they were a part of pop culture from top to bottom. Jim Henson had been collaborating with Disney up to his death in May 1990, after which the Muppets were sold to Disney in February 2004. (Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock remained with The Jim Henson Company, which is why Kermit no longer appears on Sesame Street.)
Since that time, there have been several Disney-helmed projects that have never quite landed with the same oomph that Henson's shows hit with. You had ABC's Muppets TV; a French version of The Muppet Show; The Muppet's Wizard of Oz; a few holiday specials (the Lady Gaga one, to be fair, has made it into our regular holiday rotation); the James Bobin-helmed films The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted (trying to capture the chaos of The Muppets Take Manhattan, my favourite non-Christmas Muppet movie); and most recently, three failed TV shows: The Muppets, a sitcom aping the faux documentary format popular in the 2010s, Muppets Now, a fun educational and entertainment show that I thought was severely underrated, and The Muppets Mayhem, a series focusing on the Electric Mayhem, who at most had always really been backup characters, so a show focused on them was a big swing that didn't make contact.
Why these films and TV shows have failed to work is up for debate. I personally enjoyed playing with the format in 2011's The Muppets. Jim was all about experimenting, and a storyline he was pushing towards his passing was Kermit and Piggy breaking up (this is where The Muppets starts), but there has long been resistance in fandom to change and given drama behind the scenes with the firing of Steve Whitmire and static from Frank Oz, there was extra skepticism on the part of Muppet fandom towards Disney. This carried through to Muppets Now and The Muppets Mayhem, with the frequent refrain from fandom being "bring back the original format". And today, that's exactly what ABC and Disney+ did with Seth Rogen executive producing the return of a classic.
One of the things Disney never really seemed to capture (with the exception of some moments in the Gaga special) was the fact that Jim never condescended to younger people in the audience and sat jokes that would fly right over our tiny heads next to jokes squarely aimed to us when we were wee, so this bawdy combination made the Muppets click for the entire family. We'd see this format years later in films like Shrek and, when executed properly, went over like gangbusters.
In true Muppets fashion, this was a back door pilot that came in through the front door, on roller skates, playing a trumpet. The format is 100% the classic form. The old theatre is back with the same old staff, the same claustrophobic staging, and the same banter. We open with the classic cold open featuring the guest star Sabrina Carpenter, the traditional theme and Gonzo gag, and sketches that would be at home when I was in short pants watching this show in the 70s and 80s.
Many people forget that the first Muppets performance was on Saturday Night Live, and when that crashed due to what could politely be called "a clash of personalities" between the Muppets team and SNL writer Michael O'Donoghue, Jim and Frank created a pilot for The Muppet Show called Sex and Violence. This is the episode that was shopped around to sell the original concept, and bringing Seth Rogen in now as the executive producer feels like the right call. This is a man who produced the television adaptation of The Preacher and the Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson film, but he also has an arch meta dramedy about Hollywood politics (The Studio). He "gets it", and in the case of this special, it feels like the assembled team of writers (Gabe Liedman, Nedaa Sweiss, Kelly Younger, and Andrew Williams) all got it too. Given their credits include Pen15, The Tonight Show and several Muppet projects, these are people who know the business, they know the Muppets, and they know a bit of blue comedy.
We have appearances from Maya Rudolph and Seth (but they don't feel forced), we have the old cast, and we so many chickens! The only thing I DIDN'T like was that the audience was now a mix of Muppets and humans. I get that this is supposed to allow an opportunity to bring in additional stars for quick gags, but the guest has always been the through line for the audience, and for me it irked me. This is my middle aged "change is bad" reaction, though, and I suspect this will not bother other viewers as much as it bothered me.
If you are a Muppet fan you will enjoy this. We get some good Piggy and Kermit banter, we get Rizzo and Pepé, we get a mix of Sabrina Carpenter's music and classics, plus we get Statler and Waldorf reminding us of the first time many of us heard roast comedy and why they are the true felt kings of the craft. This leaves two questions: will it land with younger audiences who have not grown up with variety shows, and will this lead to the return of The Muppet Show in its old format?
I can't say I know, but I know I hope the answer to both questions is yes.
Tags: The Muppet Show, The Muppets, Sabrina Carpenter, Seth Rogen, Maya Rudolph, Muppets, Disney+, ABC, variety show, Disney
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