Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie and the rest of the Muppets will be coming to Sky 1 this autumn in a new season of programmes that will include Rob Lowe drama You, Me & The Apocalypse, Craig Cash comedy After Hours and Timothy Spall as Fungus the Bogeyman.
The Muppets will return in a “mockumentary” series following the ups and downs of their everyday lives as they prepare to return for a new TV series.
The small screen return, made by ABC Studios in the US, comes after their 2011 Oscar-winning big screen outing The Muppets and last year’s sequel Muppets Most Wanted.
Sky said on Thursday it had increased spend on original programming on Sky 1 by 20%, with new UK drama and comedy set to premiere on the channel all year round for the first time and Wednesdays signposted as the home of Sky 1 drama.
It comes after a reshuffle of its other channels, including dropping one of its two Sky Arts channels and axing originated UK shows from Sky Living.
New comedy will include Craig Cash’s After Hours, set in a community radio station and starring Ardal O’Hanlon, John Thomson and Jamie Winstone, and Sue Johnston in Rovers, about a lower league football team.
Rob Lowe will be joined by Pauline Quirke, Mathew Bayton and Paterson Joseph in You, Me & The Apocalypse, about the final days before a comet collides with the Earth, part of a drama slate that also includes Fungus the Bogeyman, co-starring Victoria Wood and Keeley Hawes, and Joanna Scanlan alongside Timothy Spall, and James Nesbitt in Stan Lee’s Lucky Man.
