BOOTLEG FILES 890: “A Muppet Family Christmas” (1987 television special with Kermit the Frog and a lot of friends).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On VHS and DVD, but in edited versions.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Rights clearance issues.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not unless someone pays a lot of money to straighten things out.
This week’s column is different from its predecessors because the subject in the spotlight, the 1987 television special “A Muppet Family Christmas,” has been commercially released on VHS video and DVD. The problem is that the North American home entertainment format releases were forced to edit out a significant amount of musical numbers due to the problems in clearing the music rights for the songs. Even worse, the production has never been on Blu-ray, has never been on any streaming service and has been absent from broadcast television for decades – with little to no hope of being seen again in its entirety.
Mercifully, some enterprising TV viewers had the foresight to videotape the show when it was first broadcast and it can be seen in its entirety – complete with the original commercials – in an unauthorized YouTube posting. Or, at least it hasn’t been detected by the rights holders and, thus, has avoided the dreaded cease-and-desist notice.
This is truly an unfortunate situation because “A Muppet Family Christmas” might be the best Christmas season television special of all time. Yes, better than Charlie Brown and his fercockt tree, better than the Grinch and his endless side-eye glances to the viewer, better than the arthritic stop-motion characters in those Rankin-Bass romps, and better than any musical-comedy romp featuring whatever unemployed pop stars and sitcom actors could be corralled into reading bad jokes from cue cards amid the howls of laugh track jollity.
The brilliance of “A Muppet Family Christmas” is based in its complexity, with characters from four different Jim Henson franchises – “Sesame Street,” “The Muppet Show,” “Fraggle Rock” and “Muppet Babies” – and 12 different musical numbers (including a 12-song medley) put together in a 52-minute production. Even better, there is an original script that is both laugh-out-loud funny while being warm without getting stuck in treacly sweetness.
The basic concept of “A Muppet Family Christmas” is simple – Fozzie Bear’s mother is planning to rent her farmhouse to Doc and his dog Sprocket (from the North American version of “Fraggle Rock”) for the Christmas holidays and enjoy a vacation in Malibu. To her less-than-delighted surprise, her son shows up with most of his “Muppet Show” friends for a surprise visit. Doc is initially aggravated to discover Mother Bear has decided to stay and provide accommodations for the “Muppet Show” crew, but he eventually drops his unhappiness and begins to construct bunk beds for the unexpected guests. Absent from this arrival in Miss Piggy, who is in the city for a photo shoot and last-minute shopping.
More guests show up when the “Sesame Street” cast arrives as carolers. A home movie showing the Muppets in their infancy – from the “Muppet Babies” franchise, albeit in puppet form rather than animation – is presented, and Kermit ventures underground to meet the Fraggles from “Fraggle Rock.” A snowstorm traps everyone in the farmhouse, and Kermit becomes worried because Miss Piggy is out in the storm trying to arrive in time for Christmas. It is not a spoiler to state the obvious – the porcine icon comes through safely and all involved enjoy a merry round of Christmas songs.
The genius of “A Muppet Family Christmas” comes in the blending of the franchises into a single work. There is a lot of fun with Swedish chef trying to figure out how to turn Big Bird into a Christmas dinner (he doesn’t, of course) or how Muppet dogs Rowlf (who speaks and plays piano) and Sprocket (who only barks) can’t figure each other out. There is an amusing staging of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” with the “Sesame Street” characters – a mortified Bert plays the mother (he lost the toin coss to Ernie) while the Two-Headed Monster is Santa Claus.
There are also a few new interesting characters introduced here (but, sadly, not used again) – Fozzie’s patient and loving mother, a fast-talking snowman who teams with Fozzie on a comedy act (and gets roasted by trash-talking Waldorf and Statler, who are friends of Fozzie’s mother!) and Maureen the Mink, who is Kermit’s gift to Miss Piggy (who was expecting a mink coat but accepts Maureen’s slavish devotion as her number one fan).
As for the music, there is a great mix of old favorites and a couple of newly crafted tunes. The Christmas soundtrack is entirely secular – the one religious song, “I Saw Three Ships,” is heavily truncated to give The Count the chance to show off his numerical-declaring talents. Nonetheless, it is a great score, especially the rollicking riff on “Jingle Bell Rock” and the “Sesame Street” gang’s take on “Here We Come A-Caroling.”
“A Muppet Family Christmas” was, arguably, the last artistic peak achieved by Jim Henson during his lifetime (he passed away three years after this production was shot). Henson clearly knew he had a winner in this production, as he made a rare on-camera appearance with his creations at the end of the show in a wry gag where he admires the happening but then retreats to the kitchen to begin washing stacks of dishes. Gerry Parkes as Doc was the only other human on camera.
“A Muppet Family Christmas” premiered on ABC on December 16, 1987. It didn’t turn up on UK television until two years later, although it may have confused some British viewers since the Doc character was only used in the North American version of “Fraggle Rock” – the UK version had The Captain (played by Scottish actor Fulton MacKay) as the token human and Sprocket’s owner.
“A Muppet Family Christmas” was released in North America on VHS and DVD, but not in the complete televised version. Henson’s company licensed the songs for television broadcast, but needed to relicense them for the home entertainment format. Five of the songs were not cleared for home entertainment and were cut, including the “Muppet Babies” sequence and the “Sleigh Ride” number that introduced the Snowman as Fozzie’s comedy partner. A couple of brief comic exchanges were also edited out.
Re-releasing “A Muppet Family Christmas” is unlikely, given the rights issues on the four franchises used in this show – after Henson’s death, these franchises were no longer under a single ownership, so there would need to be more negotiating to secure the rights for a new broadcast, either on television or streaming.
Mercifully, the original uncut version of “A Muppet Family Christmas” is on YouTube. If you’ve never seen it, you’re in for a treat. And if you haven’t seen it in years, consider this a holiday gift that you deserve!
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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