Add
Private Notes
The Jim Henson Hour pitch is a 12½ minute video hosted by Jim Henson from The NY Muppet Workshop. Surrounded by all sorts of Muppet and Creature Shop creatures from previous productions, Henson explains the early concept of The Jim Henson Hour.
The original plan, as Henson explains it, was for the show to have a rotating schedule of four different kinds of episodes; one for each week of the month. The first week would feature a one-hour episode of Jim Henson's The Storyteller. The second week was for Lead Free TV, featuring the characters from the unaired Inner Tube pilot. Henson describes Lead Free TV as "the Muppet Show from the future," full of special effects, rock music, fast-paced comedy and human guest stars. The third week, a Picture Book Special would be featured, in the vein of Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas, The Christmas Toy and The Tale of the Bunny Picnic. The fourth week, anything could happen; a detective story with Kermit and the gang, a story about an enchanted bowling ball, an outer space adventure or a look behind the scenes. As Henson describes these four genres of episodes, clips are shown to provide examples of each.
The idea of these four types of episodes was dropped when The Jim Henson Hour was produced. The Storyteller did air as part of the show, but it was in half-hour episodes. Also, although the MuppeTelevision segments of the show as it was actually produced are similar in format to Lead Free TV, the Lead Free characters were replaced by the Muppets; some familiar faces, others new characters.
The show is similar in format to the Muppet Television segments of The Jim Henson Hour. Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy make brief appearances in the show, but the focus is on the new characters. According to writer David Misch, the pilot was not meant to resemble The Muppet Show; Kermit was merely given a role when it became hard for Henson to sell the series.
In the Jim Henson Hour pitch, clips from Inner Tube are presented as "Lead Free TV." Jim Henson describes it as "the Muppet Show from the future," and explains that it is one of the four types of programs in The Jim Henson Hour's proposed rotating schedule. It was planned to have a weekly guest star (John Candy was originally planned to guest star in this pilot, but in the end no guest star appeared).
Several scenes from this can be seen in the television special The World of Jim Henson.
May 8, 1989
From the Disney Archives, an Interview with Jim Henson, Frank Oz & Michael Frith
