Since their series debut in 1976, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and the rest of the Muppets have attained an iconic status in pop culture, as evidenced by the four Emmys this picked up last month for Disney+’s “The Muppet Show” special featuring Sabrina Carpenter. It’s an achievement that is all the more impressive given how close they came to obscurity.
\n\n“It was such a hard road to get ‘The Muppet Show’ made,” says Lisa Henson, daughter of Muppets creator Jim Henson and CEO of The Jim Henson Company.
\n\nHaving created puppets for “Sesame Street” and “Saturday Night Live” in the early 1970s, Henson was itching to make his own show. But after two failed “Muppet Show” pilots for ABC and some further development work for CBS that went nowhere, he was stuck – until a British television producer called Lew Grade came along. “It was a real study in perseverance,” says Henson’s biographer Brian Jay Jones.
\n\nGrade, the founder of production company ITC, had a background in vaudeville and an empty studio outside London. He saw potential in Henson and his band of merry Muppets and offered $125,000 for a 30-minute episode, which in 1976 was a “spectacular amount…
Original source: https://variety.com/v/tv/