The Muppets, the lovable puppets created by Jim Henson and company, starred in their own half-hour comedy-variety show 1976-1981. Each week a guest celebrity was also on hand to assist master of ceremonies Kermit the Frog. Usually, it was a single guest, but in 1980 the guest for one show was Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), with R2D2, C3P0 (Anthony Daniels), and Chewbacca the Wookie (Peter Mayhew) to promote the 2nd Star Wars movie. At one time ABC could have picked up the program, but the network let its option lapse because it did not think that adults would watch the show. Henson then accepted an offer to produce the series in England for CBS-owned tv stations & syndication. It went on to become the most popular first-run syndicated series in TV history, reaching hundreds of millions of viewers in more than one hundred countries.
NBC finally showed interest in bringing the muppets to prime-time with an hour long show, which ran 14 April 1989 to 30 July 1989. Puppeteer extraordinaire Jim Henson created this hour prime-time series, which consisted of two distinct half-hour segments: the first resembled The Muppet Show, presenting skits and songs featuring the Muppets and guest stars, while the second, called The Storyteller, presented a story, with live actors, narrated by John Hurt.
Henson's final network tv series was DINOSAURS (26 April 1991 - 3 September 1993; 1 June 1994 - 20 July 1994) on ABC. It was a collaboration of Walt Disney Television, Michael Jacobs Productions, and Jim Henson Productions. The half-hour sitcom was set during the age of dinosaurs—in the year 60,000,003 B.C., to be exact. The premise was that the dinosaurs lived mundane lives much like their modern human counterparts, and were thoughtlessly bringing about their own extinction. The series was a live-action program, shot on film. The elaborately constructed characters were operated from within by human performers, and their facial expressions were created by a process called audio animatronics.
Voices were supplied by Stuart Pankin as Earl Sinclair, a megalosaurus; Jessica Walter as his wife, Fran; Jason Willinger as their fourteen-year-old, Robbie; Sally Struthers as their twelve-year-old, Charlene; Kevin Clash as the baby, Baby; Florence Stanley (previously of Night Court) as Fran's mother, Grandma Ethyl; Sam McMurray as Earl's best friend, Roy Hess; and Sherman Hemsley as B. D. Richfield, Earl's short-tempered boss at the Wesayso Development Company. The last names of the characters—Sinclair, Hess, and Richfield—were deliberately chosen: all are extinct gasoline brands.
Muppets From Space has been on the Disney Channel
Videos from the Muppet Show tv series and movies, followed by a link for this week's episodes on the Hallmark (previously Odyssey) channel:
The Great Muppet Caper(1981)
The Muppets Take Manhattan(1984)
The Muppet Movie(1979)
Muppet Family Christmas(1995)
Muppet Treasure Island(1996)
Meet the Muppets, V. 1
Merlin(1998)
The Muppet Show is on the Hallmark Channel (previously known as Odyssey channel, no desc. available for eps). Click here for list of Muppet Show guest stars so far
Hallmark/Odyssey also now has Bewitched and I Dream Of Jeannie as well as Northern Exposure
Leonard Maltin Presents is sometimes on Saturday mornings, and usually includes classic old comedy shorts like Laurel & Hardy, the Keystone Kops, etc. The best book we've seen for looking up movie titles and descriptions is the Movie / Video Guide by Leonard Maltin
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