'The Muppet Show' returns with a delightful special and those timeless Muppets

After astir 50 years, “The Muppet Show” returns, “back [says Kermit, your amphibian compere] connected the precise signifier wherever it each started and past ended and past is possibly starting again depending connected however contiguous goes.”

Premiering Wednesday connected ABC and Disney+, this is seemingly that uncommon happening successful 21st period dealmaking and green-lighting, a aviator submitted for your approval. (Though it’s not rather a pilot, either, being the imaginable commencement of the series, which primitively ran from 1976 to 1981, oregon its 121st episode.) Pop vocalist comedienne Sabrina Carpenter is the impermanent star, a astir due choice.

There has been successful the interim the question of what to bash adjacent with these characters, astir of whom (apart from Kermit and Rowlf, the piano-playing dog, who were already celebrities) archetypal saw beingness successful “The Muppet Show.” As a confirmed Muppethead, I greet each caller bid oregon movie with a upwind eye, particularly the post-Henson Disney-produced projects, including the 2020 “Muppets Now” and the 2023 “Muppets Mayhem.” But isolated from ABC’s misbegotten “The Muppets,” 10 years gone — which attempted to marque the unit darker, much adult, much intelligence analyzable — I person been mostly satisfied and often delighted. (Muppets whitethorn beryllium nuanced, but they aren’t complex. They are eternally simply themselves, grasped successful a minute. Nor does clip wither them, being made of foam and fleece.)

An episodic arc involves the amusement being overbooked (many acquainted Muppets assemblage successful backstage, including the “mna mna” monsters), and acts having to beryllium cut. (Among them is Seth Rogen, who volition person a grumbling gag astir the inclusion of an “armadillo successful a tutu … that guy’s not adjacent canon.”) Apart from that, and notwithstanding a fewer cosmetic alterations — cinematic effects, a wider facet ratio, euphony video tropes successful the “Blinding Lights” fig (performed by Rizzo and different rats), a (mostly) quality audience, including Maya Rudolph, doing a spot — it’s an mean episode, the acquainted backstage variety-show comedy, with its sketches, philharmonic numbers and mayhem successful the wings, each to the good.

Miss Piggy is successful afloat diva flight, naturally, soaking up praise from Carpenter successful her dressing country portion threatening to writer her for stealing her look; grunting “talent walking” arsenic she pushes by the Swedish Chef connected the backstage balcony; demanding a Trojan equine and hundreds of Spartans for her “Aphrodite” number. (I indispensable accidental it was a joyousness to spot that acceptable recreated.) She’ll prima successful “Pigs successful Wigs,” a benignant of “Bridgerton” parody, with Pepé the King Prawn country stealing. We get a Muppet Labs sketch and the Great Gonzo successful a stunt gone wrong. (Things going incorrect is an indispensable facet of “The Muppet Show.”) Statler and Waldorf are backmost successful their container (perhaps they ne'er left), making hacky jokes arsenic insulting commentary. (Waldorf: “Show’s not fractional bad.” Statler: “Yeah, it’s each bad.”)

Carpenter, who volition doubly accidental that being determination is simply a imagination travel true, performs her ain “Manchild” arsenic a waitress successful a Western roadhouse (Sam the Eagle down the bar), dispatching immoderate troublesome monsters and dancing with chickens, and the Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers “Islands successful the Stream” successful a swamp among performing fish, alligators and flowers. It begins arsenic a duet with Kermit, playing his left-handed banjo, and ends with Miss Piggy, who muscles her mode in, anxious for surface clip aft her Aphrodite fig is cut.

The overbooking conundrum builds to a sentimental code from Kermit and a feel-good ending acceptable to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” Sentiment is accordant with the Muppets gestalt, but not truly portion of “The Muppet Show.” But I volition excuse it, and anticipation they instrumentality with more.