I got to witness "The Muppets" during the first part of the first season of Saturday Night Live, I say this just to prove as much as I love Jim Henson and those Muppets, I know for certain not everything he touched turned to gold I was also aware from a Jim Henson biography that in 1987 he produced a show titled Puppetman that went unsold and was about the goings on behind the scenes of a puppet show (but not like The Muppet Show, I mean the actual puppeteers).
It's best to say my opinion on Puppetman is mixed, anything involving the puppets is pretty good and there is some nice Muppet characters that wouldn't be out of place elsewhere but... the plot about Gary (Fred Newman) looking after his son and finding out the mother is going be away for 6 months (they've split) is so generic that you just want the scenes too move along.
I don't know if this was the first thing that Henson produced that took away the illusion of the Muppet characters but that might have some explaniation to why it was never picked up, but there is a spark there with the behind the scenes (though it's not exactly Larry Sanders Show).
Overall I've seen worse make it to series and go on years but next to some other Jim Henson work it's just not in the same league.
No comments:
Post a Comment