The Muppets is back: but is it too dark, too grown-up for the kids?

Kermit and Piggy have broken up and Fozzie Bear is online dating: the new Muppets is edgy but has it forgotten the kids?

In the new Muppets, Kermit and Miss Piggy are trying to co-exist as co-workers.

ABC’s much-hyped reboot of Jim Henson‘s ragtag gang of Muppets, which will soon be screened on Channel 7, shows off an edgier side, in both jokes and plot. Kermit and Miss Piggy are broken up and learning how to coexist in just a work relationship, where Kermit is the executive producer of Piggy’s late-night talk show Up Late With Miss Piggy.

Zoot, of the show’s house band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, has attended AA at some point. Fozzie Bear is into online dating — but not with other Muppets; he’s swiping right for humans.

The first episode, which has premiered in the US, centres around a potential conflict with one of Piggy’s late-night guests: Elizabeth Banks. We come to find out that Piggy and Banks have beef (or is it pork?) due to a botched script reading of The Hunger Games years ago. But the riff goes deeper than that- Banks had a behind-the-scenes, accidental role in Kermit and Piggy’s breakup. “My life is a bacon-wrapped hell on earth,” Kermit says at one point.

Of course Kermit doesn’t know this and is forced to try and make Banks appear on the show, as she’s clearly the marquee guest. Dancing With the Stars host Tom Bergeron is called on to fill in for Banks, but in the end, Banks and Piggy go head-to-head in an awkward interview segment.

In watching the new series, it’s easy to wonder: Are the new Muppets too grown-up? Do audiences want their beloved childhood puppets facing issues that may feel too close to home?

TV critics were quick to point this out, and in some instances saw it as the downfall of the new series. The Guardian characterised it as another “misstep,” saying “What were previously sly winks to a grown-up audience are now grotesque full-body grimaces, delivered with depressing sledgehammer brutality.” Ouch.

New York Magazine, though, thought there’s some hope: “It might take some time to adapt to what the gang is trying to do here, but it’s definitely in sync with the Muppet mission of entertaining everyone at their own level,” their critic wrote. NPR echoed that sentiment, saying that it’s “legitimately different” but struggles to get the dramatic elements down. The Journal’s television critic Dorothy Rabinowitz was much more optimistic, concluding that “It’s hard, after this encounter with the Muppets, to imagine any confidences from them, private or public, one wouldn’t want to hear more of.”

The creators of the show said they’re not trying to exclude kids but the jokes are aimed at fans old enough to remember the Muppets from the ’70s and ’80s. “The Muppets kind of lost their way over the years when they became strictly a product for children,” said “Muppets” executive producer Bob Kushell in a recent Journal article about the show’s comeback.

With any reboot or remake, nostalgia hinges upon the audience wanting to experience something from their own childhood, again, as an adult. And having your childhood friends change is hard. But maybe Muppets do go through tough times — after all, Kermit has always stood by the notion that it’s not easy being green.