Muppets Haunted Mansion: What the Must Watch reviewers think

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan review Muppets Haunted Mansion on Disney Plus. The Muppets star in this Halloween special based on the Haunted Mansion attractions at Disney Parks across the world.

Scott says: “A real return to form”

"I’ve been worried about the Muppets for a while. I know that’s a very innocuous thing to say! The Muppets were bought from The Jim Henson Company by Disney in 2004. They then released a critically acclaimed film called The Muppets in 2010, which really rejuvenated them. But ever since then, the Muppets have sort of drifted.

"The follow up film was not very good and was a commercial flop, they then tried to do a spoof mockumentary TV series, which didn’t really work. We reviewed, just over a year ago, Muppets Now, a Disney+ series where they tried to make something for the TikTok generation, and that felt a bit try hard too.

"I was worried that if they weren’t going to make something capturing the old Muppets magic soon, with its distinctive and unpredictable sense of humour, they were going to begin to fade into obscurity. So I am relieved to say that Muppets Haunted Mansion is a real return to form.

"There is a lot of wit, a lot of dry humour and funny one-liners in this hour special. They are not trying to bring in a new audience or are doing anything particularly deep. It is a complete hour of nonsense. Just what we all wanted.

"All of the characters that you love are here too (including my favourites Doctor Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker.) The infamous Statler and Waldorf, who I aspire to be every day, appear here as ghosts. What do they do? They say "boo" a lot!"

Hayley says: “Classic Muppet show stuff”

"They’ve fixed the problem that I had with Muppets Now, which was their attempt at modernising the Muppets by integrating new technology into it. I whined about it at the time when I reviewed it – they tried to have the Muppets doing Zoom, YouTube and Instagram, and it just felt wrong. The Muppets don’t need to be modern. They did vaudeville in the 1970s, which was already old-fashioned by that point, so it’s never been contemporary, and it bothered me that they were trying to make it so.

"But here, they get around that by making it a traditional old haunted house story where everyone’s a ghost. Even Statler and Waldorf turn up, and I love them. The only phones we see are right at the beginning when Gonzo and Pepe FaceTime Kermit to tell him ‘we’re not coming to your party, we’ve got a better one.’

"The design and the look of it is great. There are some specific gags that relate to the ride at Disneyland, because the Haunted Mansion is where it's set, but they’re not so specific that they’re not funny in themselves. I think that’s just another layer to it. If you haven’t been on the ride, you're not losing out on much.

"It feels much more like classic Muppet show stuff. It’s very silly, but it also has that noticeable undertone of cynicism that I love that balances out anything too sweet. They’ve always been really great at that, and it feels like they’ve returned to something with this."

Muppets Haunted Mansion is available now on Disney Plus.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds and all other good podcast providers.

This week, Mark Bonnar drops by to chat series 2 of Guilt on BBC Two and BBC Scotland. Plus, the team review Scenes from A Marriage on Sky Atlantic.

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