It’s time to get things started (again)

I learned a lot in Brian Jay Jones’s wonderful biography of Jim Henson, including the fact that Henson had mapped out The Muppet Show — right down to the colonnades, with the dancing muppets introducing the show to a tune I bet is playing right now in your ear — a full decade before it went on the air. He pitched the show in the mid-Sixties, and never stopped, until he finally got an OK in the U.K. from Lew Grade. The show that the American networks just could not visualize of course became a classic that ran five world-syndicated seasons.

(Still humming that theme song, right? Me too.)

It was no coincidence I made time this afternoon to watch the official trailer of the revamped version of The Muppet Show, coming as a special on Feb. 4.

I watched The Muppet Show as an adolescent, and then rewatched it decades later on DVD as a parent, and then later on streaming as, well, an older adult. I love that one of the jokes in the trailer, with Sabrina Carpenter whispering sweet nothings into Miss Piggy’s pointy ears, is about just how many generations have been fans of the Muppets through the years. Even an ageless diva like Miss Piggy would prefer not to do the math.

I also like that the trailer is transparent that this special will determine whether or not the (Seth Rogen-backed) show will go on: