“Grease” is the word; so is “Schmigadoon”

For decades, musicals have had a mixed existence.
They’ve thrived on stage – everywhere from high schools to Broadway – but were rare on TV … until now. Suddenly, the streaming networks have jumped in big-time.
The second season of “Schmigadoon” starts Wednesday (April 5) on Apple TV+; “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies” (shown heere) debuts the next day on Paramount+. Two weeks earlier, “Up Here” debuted on Hulu.
Each is a full-scale musical series, with original songs and demanding choreography. “We were in rehearsals from the beginning to the very end …. We’d start the day with Scene 9 of Episode 2 and then end the day with Scene 6 from Episode 3,” said Marisa Davila, a “Pink Ladies” star.
And these weren’t simple things to master. For “Schmigadoon,” Dove Cameron describes “this incredible number that involved quite a lot of chair-dance, chair-ography and hat-trick-ography.”
Cameron is one person who did TV musicals even when they were scarce. On the Disney Channel, she did three “Descendants” movies, plus occasional songs on her “Liv and Maddie” series; on NBC, she co-starred in a vibrant “Hairspray Live.”
But those fit the limits of networks: There have been many one-shot efforts (from “High School Musical” to “Grease Live”); however, only a few musicals – “Glee,” “Empire,” “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” – have succeeded as series.
That’s partly because networks often want 22 episodes a year – a perilous demand for any musical. Streamers? A season has 10 episodes for “Pink Ladies,” eight for “Up Here,” six for “Schmigadoon.”
That lets them get ambitious. “Schmigadoon” has its stars (Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key) wander into lands where people act like they’re in musicals. It fills the supporting cast with top talent – Kristen Chenoweth, Martin Short, Jane Krakowski, Alan Cumming and more. It still has Ariana DeBose, after her “West Side Story” Academy Award. “Ariana’s become a big deal,” said Cinco Paul, the co-creator and songwriter.
“Pink Ladies,” by comparison, needed to go young. It found women with strong talent and, in most cases, little on-camera experience.
These are self-described “theater kids.” You assume they grew up doing “Annie” and “Grease.”
Except, oddly, none of the four stars has ever done “Grease” onstage. “I’ve seen all of my friends do it,” Cheyenne Isabel Wells said. “And I’ve auditioned many times, but it never happened.”
Tricia Fukuhara came the closest, choreographing a high school dance routine to “Summer Nights”; others have missed the “Grease” experience, “but now we’ve created our own,” Ari Notartomaso said.
They play outsiders, banding together in 1954 (four years before “Grease”) to be a hip force.
Along the way, said “Pink Ladies” creator Annabel Oakes, there are reminders that the ‘50s weren’t as carefree as some people claim. There was bias and misogyny. “There were people dropping out of high school. There were people having sex in the back of cars. There was real life going on.”
In the first season of “Schmigadoon,” Paul and co-creator Ken Daurio mocked the candy-cane moods of 1940s and ‘50s musicals. The second season moves on to new decades. “Musicals got darker,” Paul said. “They don’t have happy endings. They’re more complicated.”
They also demanded more of the performers. Skilled “chair-ography” may be required.