The Jim Henson Hour

Format

The Jim Henson Hour was modeled after the Walt Disney Presents specials, in which every week Disney would show off the latest innovations and creations of his production company. At the beginning of each episode, Jim Henson would enter an oddly-decorated set (alongside the Thought Lion puppet from his series The Storyteller) and introduce the evening's show. Beyond that, the series never had a set structure. The room where Henson and the Thought Lion performed their introduction was computer animated.

Three of the thirteen installments were hour-long mini-movies:

Other shows like "Secrets of the Muppets" went behind the scenes at Henson studios, showing how the Muppets are built and operated.

Ordinarily, however, the hour was split into two thirty-minute segments. These shows would always start with a modernized variation of The Muppet Show, titled MuppeTelevision. That would often lead into more serious and sometimes darker content, such as a rerun of The Storyteller. Occasionally, a light-hearted story or more Muppet antics would close out the hour in the second half.

The first episode produced—Sesame Street... 20 Years & Still Counting—was aired as a lone special. Henson's series officially premiered a week later.

MuppeTelevision

MuppeTelevision regularly occupied the first half of The Jim Henson Hour. It was an updated version of the classic series The Muppet Show, the new twist being that the Muppets were now running an entire cable television network rather than a single variety show. The Muppets broadcast their network's programming from a unique control room called "Muppet Central". Regulars included past favorites Kermit the Frog, The Great Gonzo and Link Hogthrob in addition to new characters Digit, Leon the Lizard, Lindbergh the Kiwi, Vicki, Clifford, Waldo C. Graphic, and Jacques Roach. Also appearing as a series regular was Bean Bunny, who had previously starred in the HBO TV special The Tale of the Bunny Picnic.

Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy appeared only intermittently, as their performer Frank Oz was busy with a directorial career. Miss Piggy did get her own thirty-minute special in one show, called Miss Piggy's Hollywood, in which she and Gonzo tried to interview unwilling celebrities.

The house band for MuppeTelevision was called Solid Foam, taking the place of the psychedelic Electric Mayhem band that had appeared in most previous Muppet projects. The band included:

Electric Mayhem regulars Zoot and Animal did eventually creep into Solid Foam in the episode "Food." Only Clifford would sustain any existence outside of MuppeTelevision. Dr. Teeth also appeared in the background of a few of Solid Foam's music videos.

MuppeTelevision also tends to get interrupted on some occasions by an illegal TV station called Gorilla Television run by Ubu the Gorilla, Chip, and Zondra.

Continuing in The Muppet Show tradition, every episode had a celebrity guest star. Louie Anderson, Ted Danson, Smokey Robinson, Buster Poindexter, and k.d. lang were among those who got a chance to appear in the show's brief run.

Cast

Muppet performers

Special guest stars

Ratings

The show on average brought in a mere 5.3 rating. The show ranked 100th out of 105 programs to air that season, and was the lowest-rated program to air on the Big Three networks that season.

Cancellation and "lost" episodes

The show frequently acknowledged its own low ratings, with segments offering satirical takes on what viewers would rather watch—violent movies, ridiculous stunts, etc. In the end, the show produced just twelve episodes, three of which did not make it to air before cancellation.

In 1992, children's cable network Nickelodeon aired Secrets of the Muppets, one of the lost episodes. They followed with another unaired episode, Living with Dinosaurs, in 1993. The final hour—consisting of the MuppeTelevision installment "Food" and Storyteller episode "The Three Ravens"—aired in the UK in 1990. This is the only episode of The Jim Henson Hour that has never aired in the US.

After The Jim Henson Hour, the Muppets would not have another prime-time TV show until Muppets Tonight in 1996, six years after Jim Henson's death.

Today, the MuppeTelevision segments are bundled with the original Muppet Show and Muppets Tonight episodes into a single syndication package.

Unused episode ideas

In addition to the abandoned hour-long Storyteller episodes, Lead-Free TV and picture-book specials, Henson had many ideas for potential episodes or features that were never produced. These ideas included: The Saga of Fraggle Rock (a Fraggle Rock origin story), Inside John (a variation on Henson's Limbo concept in which the various parts of a seventeen-year-old boy's brain try to wrest control of him throughout a typical day) and ASTRO G.N.E.W.T.S. (a special that would have blended puppets with animation, computer graphics, and video effects). Other stories were proposed by Jim Henson involving enchanted bowling balls, extraterrestrial mailmen, outer-space adventures, and even a detective story with Kermit and the Muppet gang. Jim Henson also considered adapting Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and the works of A. A. Milne. Also proposed was "an hour-long musical special featuring The Electric Mayhem in Mexico".

Ownership

Following the sale of The Muppets (including Bear in the big blue house) to The Walt Disney Company in 2004, the rights to various portions of the show have been split between Disney and The Jim Henson Company. The Walt Disney Company owns all of the MuppeTelevision segments (including the 15-minute episode shown with Dog City), Miss Piggy's Hollywood, and The Secrets of the Muppets, while The Jim Henson Company retains ownership of the rest of the series.