Hulu’s ‘Up Here’ can’t help singing

The world is divided between those who love television shows where characters burst into song and those who don’t.

That brings us to “Up Here,” now streaming on Hulu. Mae Whitman stars as Lindsay, a naive small-town young woman who leaves her loyal but smarmy husband and her too-secure life to set off for New York with dreams of becoming a writer. There she suffers any number of humiliations before meeting Miguel (Carlos Valdes), another nice guy who wants more from life than his controlling family and corporate bro companions.

For reasons not initially clear, this is set in 1999, around the time “Sex & the City” was making New York a safe destination for tourists who thought its greatest cultural contribution was the cupcake shop.

The title, “Up Here,” refers to Lindsay’s head, a place she spends most of her time, agonizing about her place in the social order and the universe. So “Up Here” is not just a jokey musical, but a deeply neurotic one. But it’s hardly the first. Any musical comedy about a fretful and impetuous woman making a mess of her life in pursuit of love has a mountain to climb. One was called “Crazy ExGirlfriend” — a brilliant vehicle for Rachel Bloom that was about a hundred times more original, more musically daring and just plain nuts as “Up Here.”

This show also lacks the razzle-dazzle affection for classic Broadway found in “Schmigadoon!” on Apple TV+, returning April 5.

“Up Here” doesn’t seem so much like a proper musical as one of those established shows that decides to embark on a musical episode for a lark during sweeps. Over the decades we’ve seen (or rather heard) the musical episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the “rock opera” put on by “The Powerpuff Girls,” and a musical take on “Psych.” But those were one-offs. “Up Here” promises, or rather threatens, to go on forever.

› Baseball fans impatient for opening day can enjoy “Reggie,” streaming on Prime Video, a profile of Reggie Jackson, the largerthan-life home run king who earned the title “Mr. October” when he helped propel the New York Yankees through several late 1970s World Series.

While best known for his brash self-regard and gargantuan salaries at the very beginning of MLB’s free-agency era, Jackson’s career was not separate from the tumult of the times. He played minor league ball in Birmingham, Alabama, when that city was seen as the capital of segregation; he was a star in Oakland, California, when it was the home and headquarters of the Black Panther movement; and he arrived in the Bronx when that borough was literally burning, a symbol of urban blight that could not be ignored. Throughout “Reggie,” the retired star ruminates about his place in history and worries that he didn’t do enough for the cause of racial justice.

› Apple TV+ streams the new music competition series “My Kind of Country.”

› Peacock streams the 2023 M. Night Shyamalan thriller “Knock at the Cabin.”