It’s time to play the music! It’s time to light the lights! Disney has just revealed huge news for fans of The Muppets!
As of February 19th, all five seasons of the original The Muppet Show which ran for 5 seasons from 1976 to 1981 will be streaming on Disney+!
The news was announced on Disney’s official Twitter account:
It’s time to play the music. It’s time to light the lights. It’s time for The Muppet Show on #DisneyPlus! All five seasons of @TheMuppets‘ classic series are streaming February 19. pic.twitter.com/wE1UgqrLwO
— Disney (@Disney) January 19, 2021
This is a big deal for fans of the series as only the first three seasons were released on DVD, and the last of those was back in 2008. Season 4 was teased back in 2009 but never came to fruition, leaving collections incomplete for over a decade. Seasons 4 and 5 have been hotly anticipated as they contain legendary performances by guests like John Denver, Christopher Reeve, Debbie Harry, Tony Randall, Paul Simon, and the unforgettable stars of Star Wars.
Whether these are 100% complete and include the UK sketches and all the music performances that were lacking on the original DVDs remains to be seen.
Personally, as a huge fan of everything Muppets, I have been waiting for this for many years, relying on poor transfers or old recordings off The Disney Channel for my late-season Muppets fix. I certainly hope this is a sign of things to come in the future and we get streaming versions of later series that are lesser-known such as “Muppets Tonight” and the “MuppeTelevision” segments of the Jim Henson Hour.
Disney has been strangely quiet with The Muppets, beyond the Muppets Now series which was met with a moderately positive reception, so this has come as a surprise to many fans out there. I feel this is definitely Disney testing the waters for more Muppets content on the service, and we can hope that this leads to wonderful new Muppets series and movies for modern audiences.
Source: io9
