Ranking the Wild and Warm World of The Muppet Movies And TV

It’s time to play the music! It’s time to light the lights!

For decades, those words from the theme to The Muppet Show have been a gateway for children to learn about show business. Over five seasons, The Muppet Show both praised and parodied the entertainment industry, bringing in some of the biggest celebrities just to set them up for outrageous gags.

As wonderful as The Muppet Show is, creator Jim Henson and his constant collaborator Frank Oz spread their influence long before and after, leaving behind a host of wonderful projects, including Muppet movies. These great Muppet projects capture the characters’ combination of sweetness and sarcasm while showing off magisterial puppeteering by Henson, Oz, and the other performers.

1. The Muppet Show (1976 – 1981)

The syndicated series The Muppet Show didn’t introduce the Muppets, nor did it start out strong. With no budget and little support behind its production in England, the show received a strange set of guest stars, who would baffle children and struggle to match the Muppets' humor.

But after inviting folks like The Andy Griffith Show star Jim Nabors, supermodel Twiggy, and Candace Bergen (a person with a very complicated relationship with puppets) to the Muppet Studio, the show soon got people who could play right along with the weirdos, Vincent Price, Steve Martin, and the cast of Star Wars.

2. The Muppet Movie (1979)

Given all of its glamour and anarchic spirit, it’s easy to miss the earnestness at the heart of The Muppet Show. Working with writers Jerry Juhl and Jack Burns and director James Frawley, Henson flipped that approach for The Muppet Movie. The film had its share of special guest stars, including Charles Durning and Austin Pendleton as villain Doc Hopper and his accomplice, and greats such as Richard Pryor, Mel Brooks, and even Orson Welles all show up.

But The Muppet Movie pushes the humans to the side of the stage to focus on the story of Kermit the Frog gathering his friends and making it to Hollywood. That plot might sound crass, but The Muppet Movie bares its soul with wonderful songs by Paul Williams, including the magical central number, “The Rainbow Connection.” To date, it ranks as not only the best of the Muppet movies, but one of the greatest movies to hit the screen.

3. The Great Muppet Caper (1981)

The Muppet Movie provided an origin for our favorite felt animals, and The Great Muppet Caper showed off what they could do with their new status quo. Directed by Jim Henson with a writing team of Tom Patchett, Jay Tarses, Jerry Juhl, and Jack Rose, The Great Muppet Caper puts the central characters in a thriller plot as if these are parts played by the actors we know from previous works.

The story does sometimes get confusing, as Kermit still goes by Kermit and Fozzie goes by Fozzie. But the film features even more mind-bending effects, including a larger riding sequence and an Esther Williams-style swimming number, as well as some outstanding jokes, including a running gag about Kermit and Fozzie being twins. Whatever confusion the premise might invite soon falls away when viewers just relax and let the good times roll over them.

4. The Muppets (2011)

On the one hand, The Muppets inaugurated one of the most specious trends in modern filmmaking, the legacy sequel. On the other hand, The Muppets nails the balance of reverence and humor, even if the movie directs that reverence at the puppets themselves.

Directed by James Bobin and written by star Jason Siegel and Nicholas Stoller, The Muppets charges Siegel’s Gary, his fiancee Mary (Amy Adams), and his brother Walter, himself a Muppet, with reuniting the old team. The Muppets captures the sense of excitement and razzle-dazzle of The Muppet Show, with some outstanding songs by Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords, making it the best new Muppet material in a long time.

5. Muppets Tonight (1996 – 1998)

No one would dispute the greatness of the Muppet movies, at least when they work. However, the Muppets remain best suited as hosts of a tv program. That’s what they do on the short-lived and underrated revival Muppets Tonight, which aired for two seasons on ABC.

Muppets Tonight takes a modern (for the time) approach, with a slick talk show aesthetic and a new host in the form of the cool catfish Clifford. But behind its trappings was the tried-and-true Muppet Show formula, in which guest stars come in and take part in ridiculous sketches, while Kermit tries and fails to keep everything running.

6. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

After the death of creator Jim Henson, the Muppets struggled to find their identity. The first project after Henson’s passing The Muppet Christmas Carol seemed to give the troupe direction, casting them in adaptations of literary classics.

Directed by Jim’s son Brian Henson and written by Juhl, The Muppet Christmas Carol puts Kermit in the role of author Charles Dickens, makes Kermit and Miss Piggy into Bob Cratchit and his wife, and in a perfect bit of casting, makes Fozzie into Scrooge’s old boss Mr. Fezziwig into Fozziwig. In addition to new songs from Paul Williams, The Muppet Christmas Carol also boasts a committed performance from Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge, as well as enchanting new puppets to portray the three Christmas ghosts.

7. The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

For the Muppets’ third theatrical outing, Henson tried to split the difference between the two previous movies. Frank Oz steps into the director's chair, co-writing with Pratchett and Tarses, to tell a story that begins with the Muppets graduating college to go to Broadway and ends with the marriage of Piggy and Kermit. In between come some wonderful shenanigans, as when the central characters split up and Rolf runs a kennel or Kermit’s amnesia and enlistment with some yuppie frogs.

The Muppets Take Manhattan suffers from one of the weaker main human casts, which underscores the lack of tonal balance. But when Oz breaks into sequences such as the Muppet Babies number, The Muppets Take Manhattan charms viewers so much that they forget about its shortcomings.

8. Muppets Now (2020)

Call it Muppets Tonight 2.0. Like its predecessor a quarter of a century earlier, Muppets Now took on the aesthetics of its day. Directed by Kirk Thatcher, Muppets Now took the form of a web show operated by Scooter, who puts together various segments for their streaming service.

Despite that high-tech setup, Muppets Now plays like vintage Muppets. Instead of segments in The Muppet Show, Muppets Now has individual shorts that serve the same purpose. Piggy interviews folks like RuPaul and Taye Diggs about fashion. The Swedish Chef competes in a cooking show with guys such as Danny Trejo. And, of course, everything goes wrong, proving that Muppet chaos transcends time.

9. Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977)

While most people identify A Muppet Christmas Carol as the great Muppet holiday classic, others turn to its predecessor Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. Directed by Henson and written by Juhl, the special adapts the 1971 book by Russell Hoban, a riff on the O. Henry classic short story “The Gift of the Magi.”

The story features Emmet the Otter’s attempts to earn Christmas money for his family, Kermit makes just a quick cameo appearance, but the special contains the heart and spectacle of the best Muppet material.

10. The Jim Henson Hour (1989 – 1993)

Although Henson loved the main Muppets, he always wanted to push puppeteering beyond those iconic characters. This led to his fantasy film The Dark Crystal (not technically a Muppet production, and therefore ineligible for this list) as well as the series The Jim Henson Hour.

Half of The Jim Henson Hour repurposed stories from an earlier series called The Storyteller, which Henson developed with The Talented Mr. Ripley director Anthony Minghella. Mixing puppets with live-action, The StoryTeller created folk and fantasy tales. For the other half of The Jim Henson Hour, the series brought back familiar characters for MuppeTelevision, a variation on The Muppet Show in which Kermit and friends ran a cable network. The Jim Henson Hour combined the old and the new for his series, but it failed to find an audience, getting canceled by NBC after a few episodes, with some unaired episodes later making it to Nickelodeon.

11. Muppets Most Wanted (2014)

In a better world, Muppets Most Wanted would have gone down in history as The Great Muppet Caper to The Muppets’s Muppet Movie. James Bobin returns to direct, this time co-writing with Nicholas Stoller, and Bret McKenzie wrote new songs, joined by great human cast members in Tina Fey and Ty Burrell.

Picking up where The Muppets left off, Muppets Most Wanted involves a criminal named Constantine, who looks just like Kermit, replacing the beloved show leader in an escape attempt. The focus on Constantine does diminish attention from more beloved Muppets, and the main human Ricky Gervais cannot key into the movie’s humor. But whenever the movie cuts to Kermit in the Gulag with Fey’s Nadya, Muppets Most Wanted proves a worthy successor to the best Muppet films.

12. Muppet Babies (1984 – 1990)

Although Disney would not acquire the Muppets until 2004, the Muppet Babies feels very much like a page out of the House of Mouse’s playbook. Created by Henson, Muppet Babies spun out of the fantasy sequence in Muppets Take Manhattan, imagining the characters as kids in a shared daycare.

Whatever they lost in the transition from puppetry to animation, the Muppets gained new dimensions as gentle pals for younger viewers. In place of the glitz and wry humor of the original show, Muppet Babies emphasized imagination and playfulness, making it a Saturday Morning staple for years.

13. The Muppets Valentine Show (1974)

Before The Muppet Show, there was The Muppets Valentine Show. In fact, Henson and his team shot the special as a pilot for what would become The Muppet Show. The special’s connection to the series becomes clear within the first moments, in which the Muppets gather for a silly song about the nature of love, introducing special guest star Mia Farrow in the process.

However, the Valentine Show is without a doubt a rough draft for better stuff to come. Most of the songs and jokes work, but the special foregrounds characters that won’t stand the test of time, including the groovy human host Wally and long-nosed Droop. Whenever familiar characters like Kermit take the stage, the show gains real energy, pointing the way to the Muppets’ future.

14. The Muppets: Second Pilot (1975)

The second pilot for The Muppet Show tries to course correct from the Valentine Show by leaning into the edgier humor. Despite a subtitle that promised all sorts of mayhem and debauchery, the second pilot doesn’t feature much of either element. It is, after all, intended for network television. But it gives more room to explosives-loving Maniac Harry and slips some innuendos into the ballroom sequences.

Most of the humor works, but the second pilot also suffers from the same problems as its predecessor, giving too little room to the best characters and giving the focus to dull characters such as the humanoid Nigel.

15. Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)

After some disappointments in the modern Disney handling of the Muppets, the studio scored a surprise hit with the Halloween special, Muppets Haunted Mansion. Yes, the title does wreak of corporate synergy, and it does involve Rizzo and Gonzo visiting a variation of the famed Disneyland attraction.

However, once the duo gets inside, director Kirk Thatcher and his co-writers Bill Barretta and Kelly Younger indulge in pure Muppet chaos. The supernatural setting gives Thatcher and company a platform to design inventive gags, channeling an anarchic spirit not often seen in the Disney era.

16. Sam and Friends (1951 – 1961)

It all started here, with a kid’s show called Sam and Friends, created by Henson for WRC-TV in Washington, DC. Looking over the history of the series, one can see how Sam and Friends laid the groundwork for the Muppets, as the show brought Henson into contact with Jerry Juhl and Bob Payne, and it’s where he debut Kermit the Frog.

However, the true sign of things to come can be found in the humor of Sam and Friends. The show often felt like a parody of mainstream television, with segments teasing newscasters or a show called “Punsmoke,” in which cowboys launched groaners at one another. Through Sam and Friends, Henson began planting the seeds that would come to fruition in The Muppet Show.

17. Muppet Shorts (2010 – 2019)

For years, the sole new Muppet content came in the form of digital shorts posted to Disney’s YouTube channel or on Disney’s website. They ranged from promotional videos for The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted to music videos, as in the Cee-Loo Green holiday track “All I Need is Love,” to actual gags, such as “Muppet Thought of the Week,” in which Uncle Deadly invites other characters to share some offbeat observation. Some of the shorts hit, others missed by a lot. But they managed to get fans through a sparse period and promised better things to come.

18. Muppet Treasure Island (1996)

Given the success of A Muppet Christmas Carol, one might wonder why Henson and Company did not just continue making Muppet-fied adaptations of classic literature. The answer comes in the form of Muppet Treasure Island, directed by Brian Henson and written by Juhl, Thatcher, and James V. Hart.

Muppet Treasure Island gets off on the right foot, casting Tim Curry as Robert Louis Stevenson’s pirate Long John Silver. But without the heart of its holiday predecessor, Muppet Treasure Island had to rely on its jokes, which failed to clear the bar of the troupe’s best work. Throw in a wooden lead performance by child actor Kevin Bishop as Jim Hawkins and Muppet Treasure Island is a drag that drives the characters away from the library.

19. The Muppets Mayhem (2023)

The Muppets don’t lend themselves well to a sitcom structure, but The Muppets Mayhem acquits itself better than most attempts. It follows the Electric Mayhem, the Muppet Show house band led by Doctor Teeth and featuring guys like Floyd Pepper and Animal. At its best, The Muppets Mayhem doesn’t acknowledge the fact that Electric Mayhem is stuck in the 70s.

At its worst, the show focuses on the recording industry in 2023, making the central group feel like a relic with no reason to exist in the 21st century. Creators Bill Barretta, Adam F. Goldberg, and Jeff Yorkes nail the tone of the band, but every time human characters (played by Lilly Singh and Anders Holm), the Mayhem drops to a dull irritation.

20. Muppet Babies (2018 – 2022)

Muppet Babies is, well, Muppet Babies, the exact same premise of the cartoon series from the 80s, just with a slick 2010s shine. The series begins with a revision of the original theme song and the characters all appear as CGI renditions. The CG approach does better retain the felt and fur of the real Muppets, and there’s a fundamental innocence to the episodes.

However, Muppet Babies 2018 doesn’t quite capture the energy of the original, especially against the current crop of CGI-animated children's shows. Muppet Babies feels like one more show that kids put on in the background and soon forget, inspiring none of the imagination promised by its theme song.

21. Muppets From Space (1999)

Muppets Form Space is not the last Muppet movie before the 2011 revival, but it was the last Muppet movie to hit theaters until The Muppets brought them back. It’s easy to see why Muppets From Space relegated the characters to direct-to-video land–it's by far the weakest of the Muppet movies.

Although co-writer Jerry Juhl retains some of the best elements of the classic Muppets, including fun parts by stars such as Jeffery Tambor and Ray Liotta, it also gives Gonzo an unneeded origin story and commits to too many unneeded bits, including lots of scenes in which the Muppets dance to classic funk music for no reason. Juhl’s co-writers Joseph Mazzarino and Ken Kaufman try to balance humor and heart, but veteran kids movie director Tim Hill flattens it all to bland kid’s fare, failing to take advantage of the central characters.

22. The Muppets (2015 – 2016)

Because the Muppets deal with celebrities and show business, they always run the risk of becoming dated. Kids watching even the best episodes of The Muppet Show will have no idea about Peter Sellers, nor will the youngest viewers care about Amy Adams and Jason Seigel in The Muppets. But the characters retained a timeless quality by drawing from their roots in vaudeville and Broadway, bringing modern stars into the past instead of scrambling to catch up with whatever was hot at the time.

Created by Bill Prady and Bob Kushell, the muppets forgets this essential lesson, giving audiences a sitcom that borrows the workplace mockumentary approach of The Office. This mid-2000s aesthetic makes the Muppets feel creaky, a problem not helped by its emphasis on relationship drama. All of this could be forgiven if any part of the muppets were funny, but its jokes fall as flat as the courier typeface used in its logo.