A loving spoof of midcentury musicals, from “Brigadoon” to “Oklahoma!” to “Carousel,” the Apple TV+ series “Schmigadoon!” returns for a second season with its modern-day couple, played by Keegan-Michael Key and Cecily Strong, stumbling into an entirely different musical twilight zone: A place called Schmicago.
A winking homage to titles from the ‘60s and ‘70s — Bob Fosse’s greatest hits (“Pippin”/“Chicago”/“Sweet Charity”/“Cabaret”), the hippie-inspired (“Hair”/“Godspell”) plus “A Chorus Line,” “Sweeney Todd” and more — somehow the comedic zaniness of this improbable mashup works. While I appreciated the show’s first season, I quickly lost patience with it; the central joke felt too repetitive. I didn’t experience any of that with its move to Schmicago.
Mired in personal and professional ennui, Josh and Melissa (Key and Strong) head back into the woods (ha! A pun worthy of a third season if it tackles the ‘80s) to recapture that old Schmigadoon magic. But instead of a Technicolor soundstage, they encounter a darker, seedier alternate reality, where they are greeted by a “Pippin”-esque narrator (Tituss Burgess) who performs the opening number promising lots of sex, but no romance: “Does that shock you? We hope it shocks you because we’re really puttin’ a lot of effort into it!”
