Fans of Broadway musicals and the TV series “Pushing Daisies” and “Galavant” unite: Apple TV+’s “Schmigadoon” is the musical comedy series you didn’t know you need.
A joyfully silly fantasy, “Schmigadoon!” begins by showing viewers how two doctors, Melissa (a game Cecily Strong, “Saturday Night Live”) and Josh (the equally appealing Keegan-Michael Key), met and fell in love. Three years later, the couple has settled into a boring routine to Melissa’s dismay. She insists on a couples’ hike in the woods to revive their stagnant romance.
While hiking they cross a fog-enshrouded bridge and are suddenly inside a 1940s/1950s-era MGM-style musical. The forest now looks like a set made of plywood trees. The town of Schmigadoon features a central square surrounded by one-dimensional buildings.
The townsfolk welcome Melissa and Josh with a musical number that clearly apes the title tune from “Oklahoma!” even as the show’s title/concept brings to mind “Brigadoon.”
“It must be something they do for tourists,” Melissa says in response to the townsfolk’s opening number, “like Colonial Williamsburg!”
Writer Cinco Paul (“Despicable Me”) and director Barry Sonnenfeld (“Pushing Daisies”) emphasize comedy that flows from reenacting and goofing on musical theater tropes. In one number bad boy carnie Danny (Tveit) sings to Melissa a “Carousel”-esque song about how when they get married they’ll have “two girls for you and two boys for me.” Melissa replies, “Shouldn’t the kids be for both of us?”
“Schmigadoon!” is chok-a-block with musical theater mainstays – Kristin Chenoweth, Aaron Tveit, Ann Harada, Jane Krakowski – who are clearly having a blast with this high-concept romp (an upcoming episode features Chenoweth singing a riff on “Ya Got Trouble” from “The Music Man”).
While Melissa is a musical theater fan, Josh is not and his hatred of the form adds a nice edge. When the pair discover they can’t escape Schmigadoon – as the townsfolk suddenly appear to sing at them again — Josh quips, “It’s like ‘The Walking Dead’ meets Glee’!”
Streaming Friday, “Schmigadoon!” is a hoot — an inventive and thoroughly enjoyable summer delight.
Making ‘Schmigadoon!’
Writer Cinco Paul said he wasn’t watching a musical in 1997 when he hit on the idea for “Schmigadoon!” He was watching the 1981 movie “An American Werewolf in London.”
“You know how it opens with the two guys on that backpacking trip?” Paul said. “It was like the opening to ‘Brigadoon’ but I wondered what if these two guys, instead of meeting a werewolf, stumbled into a musical.”
Paul liked his idea but didn’t know what to do with it, so he filed it away. Flash forward 30 years through Paul’s success writing animated films, including the “Despicable Me” series, and he was ready to move into live-action.
“I met with Lorne Michaels’ company and they mentioned they were interested in a TV show that was musical in some way,” Paul recounts of the meeting that turned into a pitch for “Schmigadoon!”
A lifelong pianist, Paul said his mother played cast recordings (“Camelot,” “South Pacific”) and he was involved in his high school’s musical theater program, often playing piano. He said “Schmigadoon!” is inspired 50/50 by MGM musicals of the 1940s and 1950s and by Broadway shows.
Sonnenfeld, the show’s director, said he’s not naturally drawn to musicals but he studied them once he got the job.
“I wanted it to feel like a combination of real and stylized,” Sonnenfeld said, “not unlike what I did with ‘Pushing Daisies’ or ‘The Addams Family’ or even the Patrick Warburton version of ‘The Tick.’ We always want to push reality but not in performance. I wanted all the actors to play totally real.”
“Schmigadoon!” never really explains itself – how Schmigadoon came to be, how Melissa and Josh got there — with Paul saying “the why” is the least interesting part of the story.
“It’s sort of the ‘Groundhog Day’ rule: Make all of it so delightful that no one really cares,” he said. “For me it’s just that the universe created this place because this couple needed it.”
Although the story seemingly wraps up by the end of its six-episode run, Paul said he does have ideas on how the series can continue.
“There are ways that we could move forward,” he said. Perhaps with different characters arriving in Schmigadoon? “I am not free to comment.”
‘Stateless’ has local tie
Next week PBS documentary series “POV” debuts director Michele Stephenson’s “Stateless” (10 p.m. Monday, WQED-TV) about a long-running conflict between Haiti and the Dominican Republic that in a 2013 anti-Black, nationalist movement saw the citizenship of thousands Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic revoked. The film follows Dominican attorney Rosa Iris Diendomi advocating for social justice.
After filming was complete, Diendomi moved to Pittsburgh’s North Side in August 2019 in the face of threats to herself and her children over her work. A supportive friend in Pittsburgh encouraged her to come to Western Pennsylvania where she’s now working as a support specialist for migrant students.
WQED will host an online panel discussion about the film at 7 p.m. Monday featuring Diendomi and Stephenson. Register for the panel at ovee.itvs.org/screenings/dbja8.
WPXI-TV reporter exits
Mt. Lebanon native Aaron Martin, who joined Channel 11 in 2015, had his last day at WPXI on Wednesday.
He and his wife Katie will move to Miami to be closer to her family.
Martin will leave the TV news business altogether to become a stay-at-home dad to 14-month-old daughter Adley.
Kept/canceled
Peacock renewed “Rutherford Falls” for a second season.
Paramount+ will bring back “Evil” for a third season.
“Loki” will return for a second season on Disney+.
Epix renewed “Bridge and Tunnel” starring Carnegie Mellon grad Brian Muller for a second season to debut in 2022.
Channel surfing
Pittsburgh native Jeff Goldblum has joined the cast of HBO Max’s “Search Party” for its fifth season where he’ll play a tech billionaire. … Pittsburgh native Billy Porter voices the Recycle King on Nickelodeon’s animated series “Middlemost Post” (7:30 p.m. July 16). … Jennifer Carpenter, whose Deb died in the “Dexter” series finale, will somehow return for the show’s revival on Showtime. … Anglophiles take note: “Grantchester” returns to PBS’s “Masterpiece” for its sixth season at 9 p.m. Oct. 3 with season two of “Baptiste” kicking off at 10 p.m. Oct. 17. … In this week’s story on Channel 11’s Amy Hudak marrying Channel 4’s Jim Madalinsky I forgot another local TV news marriage that began with the parties at rival stations: Alby Oxenreiter worked at WTAE-TV when he married Karen Welles, who worked at WPXI-TV.
You can reach TV writer Rob Owen at rowen@triblive.com or 412-380-8559. Follow Rob on Twitter or Facebook. Ask TV questions by email or phone. Please include your first name and location.
