I watched The Muppet Show on Disney+ and found it charming but old-fashioned –luckily, Sabrina Carpenter mostly saves the day

Disney’s “The Muppet Show” stars Sabrina Carpenter and the original Muppet cast.

I'm not just a Muppet Show fan; I've idolized Jim Henson for most of my life. Few shared his creative gifts. He was prolific and smart and used puppetry to tell stories in new and novel ways that we'd never seen before, and have scarcely seen since his untimely death in 1990.

Henson's Muppets helped make Sesame Street possible, a show I grew up watching in the 1960s and early 1970s. The original The Muppets Show, which aired from 1976 to 1981, expanded the Muppets' world and reach, introducing a new cast of characters to work with the original leader and (adult in the room) Kermit the Frog (voiced by Jim Henson).