With classical musicals you can either get involved in the funny comedy, the pathos and the great soulful songs. Or you just can’t. If that is too great for you, you will be for Schmigadoon! cannot heat up. If you feel like escaping into a very entertaining and crazy parallel world for three hours, you should tune in. The exclamation mark in the title stands for the full roar of happy dance and song numbers.
The AppleTV + series tells the story of Josh and Melissa, an archetypal couple in their mid-thirties. Their relationship ran out of air recently. They start on a survival trip through the forest to strengthen their emotional bond. But the two are stranded in the small town of Schmigadoon. You will be welcomed with an elaborate show in which the townspeople sing and dance in a pastel backdrop and pompous skirts.
The punch lines are not only snappy, they also play with the clichés of the musical
At first they think it’s a crazy Disney resort, then they realize that they are stuck in a prudish ideal world of the 1940s with its excited residents. Melissa can instinctively sing along and learn something from the city. Josh is too cool and disapproving to get into the musical number. In any case, they both want to go back to the outside world. The two New Yorkers can only do that if they cross the bridge at the end of town with their true love. But as they set off, Schmigadoon appears again at the end of the bridge.
So far only musical nerds will have registered: The mini-series parodies and celebrates classic musicals such as Brigadoon, Oklahoma! and Carousel. It starts with the title and continues in the story. It has its origin – surprise – in Thuringia. In 1860 Friedrich Gerstäcker wrote in Germelshausen about a cursed village that has sunk into the earth and is allowed to appear one day every 100 years. In the musical Brigadoon if the plot is moved to Scotland, it remains otherwise the same: a man who arrives in the village on this one day falls in love and has to decide whether to return to his old life.
The parody works mainly through the nifty dialogues. The authors of Schmigadoon! are known for their work in sketch comedy and sitcoms. The punch lines aren’t just snappy. At the same time, they play with the clichés of musicals on a meta level. When a young woman told a group of friends about her engagement, Melissa says that female characters in earlier musicals were said to have been “badly written”. In addition, the city could not be so old-fashioned, given the “color-blind casting”. The strong ensemble carries the series. Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth, for example, shines as a grouchy pastor’s wife who is nothing more important than abstinence before marriage.
After the six episodes, the gag the story is about is over. We got it, musicals from the forties and fifties are cheesy, sexist and all very similar. Diving into the quirky musical world for a few hours with Josh and Melissa is still very worthwhile.
Schmigadoon !, Apple TV +, a new episode every Friday