The Jim Henson Hour

Jim Henson Productions

⚠ Unverified — hosted on the Internet Archive, not confirmed public domain. Opens on archive.org; nothing plays here directly.

The Jim Henson Hour is an American television series that aired on NBC in 1989. It was developed as a showcase for The Jim Henson Company's various puppet creations, including the Muppet characters. Nine of the twelve episodes produced aired on NBC before the program was canceled due to low ratings. Two episodes later aired on Nickelodeon in 1992 and 1993, and the final episode "Food" never aired in the United States, but was broadcast in the UK. After The Jim Henson Hour, the Muppets did not have another prime-time TV show until Muppets Tonight (1996–98), six years after Jim Henson's death. The Jim Henson Hour was modeled after the Walt Disney Presents specials, in which every week Disney would show off the latest innovations and creations of his production company. At the beginning of each episode, Jim Henson would enter an abstractly-decorated set (alongside the Thought Lion from his series The StoryTeller) and introduce the evening's show. Beyond that, the series never had a set structure. The room where Henson and the Thought Lion performed their introduction was a computer-generated environment. Three of the twelve installments were hour-long mini-movies: The faux film noir "Dog City", narrated by Muppet Rowlf the Dog "Monster Maker", in which an alienated teenager begins secretly working at a special-effects company "Living with Dinosaurs", in which a young boy's stuffed Dinosaur comes to life and helps him deal with a troubled family life. Other shows like "Secrets of the Muppets" went behind the scenes at Henson studios, showing how the Muppets are built and operated. Ordinarily, however, the hour was split into two thirty-minute segments. These shows would always start with a modernized variation of The Muppet Show, titled MuppeTelevision. That would often lead into more serious and sometimes darker content, such as a rerun of The StoryTeller. Occasionally, a light-hearted story or more Muppet situations would close out the hour in the second half. The first episode produced —Sesame Street… 20 Years & Still Counting— was aired as a stand-alone special. Henson's series officially premiered a week later.