Lately, I've been enjoying The Muppet Show on Disney+ - an enjoyment only slightly impaired by how annoyingly not-quite-complete their collection is. Four episodes are entirely absent, and fourteen others (helpfully chronicled by the Muppet Wiki) have bits edited out for presumably music rights reasons (although a couple might just be that someone picked up the edited US version of an episode instead of the full UK one with its extra two minutes). But still, all the missing stuff is on YouTube anyway, and it's nice to watch mostly full episodes on a real TV!
The best part is casting my mind back and remembering which particular parts of the show have been fixed in my brain ever since watching them for the first time - which I think must have been when they showed up on the BBC in 1986/7, rather than the earlier ITV showings. I certainly knew of the Muppets from the ITV days, but I was very young at the time and I don't think really paid attention to it - my dad was a big fan, though.
I've looked up on Genome exactly when the episodes were on, so I can share with the internet my own personal Muppet Show dates and times - I'm sure it's essential knowledge for anyone keeping track of my lifelong passion for the puppets...
Sat 08/02/1986 17:20 Elton John
Sat 15/02/1986 17:20 Mark Hamill
Sat 22/02/1986 17:20 Rudolf Nureyev
Sat 01/03/1986 17:20 Raquel Welch
Sat 08/03/1986 17:20 Peter Sellers
Sat 15/03/1986 17:20 John Denver
Sat 22/03/1986 17:20 Lynn Redgrave
Sat 29/03/1986
Sat 05/04/1986 17:20 Harry Belafonte
Sat 12/04/1986 17:20 Debbie Harry
Sat 19/04/1986 17:20 Rita Moreno
Sat 26/04/1986 17:20 Dom DeLuise
Sat 03/05/1986 17:20 Cleo Laine
Wed 03/09/1986 19:35 Twiggy
Wed 10/09/1986 19:35 Glenda Jackson
Wed 17/09/1986 19:35 Paul Williams
Wed 24/09/1986 19:35 Lena Horne
Wed 01/10/1986 19:35 Mummenschanz
Wed 08/10/1986 19:35 Leo Sayer
Wed 15/10/1986 19:35 Julie Andrews
Wed 22/10/1986
Wed 29/10/1986 19:35 Vincent Price
Wed 05/11/1986 19:35 Sandy Duncan
Wed 07/01/1987 19:35 Charles Aznavour
Wed 14/01/1987 19:35 Diana Ross
Wed 21/01/1987 19:35 Ethel Merman
Wed 28/01/1987 19:35 John Cleese
Wed 04/02/1987 19:35 Judy Collins
Wed 11/02/1987 19:35 Bob Hope
Wed 18/02/1987 19:35 Madeline Kahn
Sun 08/03/1987 17:05 Bernadette Peters
Sun 05/04/1987 17:15 Milton Berle
Sun 03/05/1987 16:35 Kris Kristofferson / Rita Coolidge
Sun 07/06/1987 17:00 Edgar Bergen
Sun 14/06/1987 17:15 Zero Mostel
Sun 21/06/1987
Sun 28/06/1987 17:00 Steve Martin
Sun 05/07/1987 17:00 Alice Cooper
Sun 12/07/1987
Sun 19/07/1987 17:00 Marisa Berenson
Sun 26/07/1987
Sun 02/08/1987 17:00 Helen Reddy
Sun 09/08/1987
Sun 16/08/1987 17:30 Dyan Cannon
Sun 23/08/1987 17:10 Arlo Guthrie
Sun 30/08/1987 17:15 Elke Sommer
Wed 09/09/1987 19:35 Crystal Gayle
Wed 16/09/1987 19:35 Dudley Moore
Wed 23/09/1987 19:35 Sylvester Stallone
Wed 30/09/1987 19:35 Cheryl Ladd
Wed 07/10/1987 19:35 Roy Clark
It's an interesting pattern alternating between weekend teatime and Wednesday early-evening (with quite a few weeks skipped - at least a couple of times to accommodate an extra-long episode of Dallas). I do remember watching a large number of these, and like I say, bits of them became permanent fixtures in my head - the most interesting of these has to be the Mark Hamill episode!
Because I was obviously still very into Return of the Jedi in early 1986 (though it had rather been replaced in coolness by things like Transformers by that time), and you'd think I would have remembered vividly the Star Wars scenes in that one. But no, the one bit of that episode I've always recalled was Scooter, rehearsing in his room and then performing the wonderful "Six String Orchestra"!
I've always loved Scooter. If I ever got to be on the Muppet Show, I'd insist on the two of us doing a bit together. It's just a bit surprising that all the Star Wars stuff didn't leave anywhere near as big an impression on me...
At least two of my oldest memories of Muppets come from scenes absent from Disney+ - the John Denver episode is one of the omitted ones, and that contains "The Happy Wanderer", in which three pigs climb a mountain and one by one fall down with a Valderaaaargh!
And the Bernadette Peters episode is shockingly shorn of Robin's closing number, in which he wants to do "They Call the Wind Maria" from Paint Your Wagon, but Kermit makes him do the cute little song "I'm Five" instead.
"And when I sit in my father's chair my feet can reach the floor (almost)" really made me giggle at the time, and still does now. I wonder which of the two songs has copyright issues, making Disney+ delete it?
It's an interesting episode anyway, because cutting those scenes really doesn't harm the running storyline throughout the episode of Robin feeling ignored - that's all resolved by the wonderful performance with Bernadette Peters of "Just One Person", and then the "I'm Five" section is just a coda after it. You wouldn't notice there was anything missing if you hadn't seen the full episode before.
The moral of the story is that muppets are great, and you should all rush to either Disney+ or YouTube, according to preference, to watch them right now!
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