The Scottish Mail on Sunday

Why is there such a buzz about..?

- Neil Armstrong

There are plenty of laugh-out-loud gags in Schmigadoo­n! and the set design is a visual treat, but it’s the songs that have brought most joy to fans. There are several in each episode of the six-part comedy, and they recall the big numbers in classics such as Oklahoma!, Carousel and The Sound Of Music, while being showstoppe­rs in their own right. The playlist includes swooning love songs, rousing tap-dance tunes, a ridiculous­ly catchy ditty about the local delicacy, corn puddin’, and an indelible ode to sex education.

Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key play Melissa and Josh, a bickering couple who stumble on the strange town of Schmigadoo­n (remember Brigadoon?) and then find themselves unable to leave, trapped in a musical where the townspeopl­e make a song and dance about anything and everything. In order to escape, a helpful leprechaun tells them, they have to find true love, which they apparently don’t have with each other. Cue dalliances with the town’s ‘rapscallio­n’ Danny Bailey (Aaron Tveit) and doctor (Jaime Camil) for Melissa, and with waitress Betsy (Dove Cameron) and teacher Miss Tate (Ariana DeBose) for Josh.

The show (also starring Alan Cumming, left, as the town’s mayor) affectiona­tely sends up plotlines, characters and tropes from Golden Age musicals but is also a love letter to them, and it’s an uplifting delight.

If there is a complaint, it is that the episodes are too short. A reprise in the form of a second series seems a certainty.

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