Jim Henson’s Muppets have been entertaining children and adults alike for 50 years. And to celebrate that half-century of affable humor, Disney is throwing them a birthday party with The Muppet Show, an ABC/Disney+ special (February 4) that follows to the format of the classic TV series.
Part tribute, part soft relaunch intended to gauge interest in a full season reboot, this charming return engagement melds the old with the new with great gonzo (or is that Great Gonzo?) flair.
A silly song-and-dance affair that concludes with a showstopping all-hands-on-deck rendition of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”—doubling as a not-so-subtle plea—The Muppet Show sticks to its ‘70s roots while keeping things fresh via the participation of guest host Sabrina Carpenter, whose blonde, glamorous effervescence meshes perfectly with her puppet cast. It’s also amusingly mocked as a riff on the Muppets’ most famous diva, Miss Piggy.
Carpenter gets to sing two numbers with her illustrious co-stars, including an “Islands in the Stream” duet with Kermit and Piggy, and her sharp timing and playfully naughty personality are a good fit for these silly song-and-dance proceedings, which—as in the show’s original run—sprinkle crumbs of adult comedy on its for-kids craziness.
Still fundamentally vaudevillian in nature, The Muppet Show finds Kermit reopening the characters’ theater for an audience that includes Maya Rudolph and, in the wings, Seth Rogen, who hears that he’s being cut for time despite serving as the show’s executive producer (“You can let yourself know we’re going in a different direction,’ quips Fozzie Bear).
Kermit is the axis around which all this mayhem revolves, and he proves as flustered and overwhelmed—and yet, in the end, competent and lovable—as ever, managing a roster of performers who all want a second in the spotlight. With Scooter as his trusty stage manager, Kermit strives to put on a spectacular, and despite Matt Vogel’s vocal turn as the green frog sounding slightly different than Henson’s original, he authentically captures the character’s trademark enthusiasm and charm.
The Muppet Show flies through bits with rat-a-tat-tat zest—from a Bridgerton-y period piece in which Piggy winds up in a love triangle with a debonair beau and a paramour played, at the last second, by the less-than-dashing Pepe the King Prawn, to a cover of The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” courtesy of Rizzo the Rat and his alley-dwelling compatriots.
Everyone gets in on the absurd action for at least a moment or two in The Muppet Show, with Gonzo executing a daredevil feat (involving reciting Academy Award winners for Best Supporting Actress) that goes awry, Rolf wisecracking as he tickles the ivories, and Animal drumming like a wild man during the closer. There’s a gangs-all-here atmosphere to the special that’s as endearing as its genial jokes, the best of which, as always, are delivered by the cantankerously jeering pair of Statler and Waldorf.
Henson’s iconic original series had a slapstick-y, punchline-heavy spirit that struck a perfect balance between the juvenile and the mature, and this revival does likewise, coloring its goofy shenanigans with jibes about copyright infringement and self-referential nods to its own history (complaining about being sidelined while an armadillo in a tutu gets to participate, Rogen grumbles, “That guy’s not canon”). It also doesn’t mess with its characters’ basic construction, such that Piggy is a fiery egomaniac, Fozzy a clownish jester, and Beaker a weirdo scientist’s assistant prone to squeaking freak-outs.
The Muppet Show is cutely self-deprecating and scattershot, and it gets in a funny jab at our 2026 reality courtesy of a sketch in which Dr. Bunsen Honeydew opines, “These days, everything is competing for your eyeballs. Mobile devices, television, and the day-to-day terrors that consume our brains when we aren’t looking at the first two”—after which he debuts an eye serum designed to address this paradigm. Predictably, it turns out poorly for Beaker.
However, no one is tuning into this special for incisively topical material, and Tony Award-winning director Alex Timbers keeps things jaunty and cheerful throughout, flying from one gag to another with rapid-fire glee.
Whether The Muppet Show can be resurrected as a weekly hit is a question that this special can’t completely answer. Though it’s faithful to a tee, it remains to be seen if its comedy is too wholesome for today’s mature-beyond-their-years adolescents. Or if its characters inevitably feel, to modern viewers, like relics of a bygone era—no matter that they don’t look their age.
On the basis of this delightfully daffy small-screen affair, one hopes that neither is the case, regardless of the fact that, in response to Statler commenting, “Show’s not half bad!”, Statler states, “Yeah—it’s all bad!”
