Apple TV+'s 'Schmigadoon!' takes a dark turn - but still with a slight twinkle - in Season 2 of musical parody

The musical parody "Schmigadoon!" goes from a gleeful Technicolor village to a dark urban landscape as it begins Season 2 on Apple TV+.

Premiering Wednesday, April 5, the new round picks up with lovebirds Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) facing a new challenge to their relationship - difficulty in conceiving a child. As in Season 1, they escape to the forest, where they encounter the bridge that, instead of taking them to Schmigadoon, delivers them to Schmicago, a dark, foreboding world of re-imagined '60s and '70s musicals.

There they find a new cast of singing, dancing characters, which here are played by many of the same actors from Season 1, among them Alan Cumming, Kristen Chenoweth, Martin Short, Ariana DeBose, Dove Cameron, Jaime Camil and Jane Krakowski, joined by newcomers Tituss Burgess and Patrick Page.

The new episodes also will feature new original musical numbers from co-creator and executive producer Cinco Paul, who wanted this season's musical arc to reflect the darkness felt by Josh and Melissa.

"It sort of naturally arose over me looking at all these (Broadway) shows and realizing, 'Oh, there aren't happy endings in these shows,'" Paul explains. "Or even if they're slightly happy, they're ambiguous. And so I thought as Josh and Melissa enter the next phase of life, maybe they're struggling with happiness, their feeling of joylessness.

"And I really like the idea that they have this drive to go back to Schmigadoon, where things were happy and life was easier," he continues. "But instead, they find themselves in a place that's just as dark and complicated as the world they live in."

As in the first season, there are impressive production numbers and individual performances as well as plenty of tongue-in-cheek nods to various movie musicals. And the two leads, Key and Strong, continue to prove their musical chops.

But perhaps most noteworthy is the fact that many of the stage actors returned. These are accomplished, in-demand thesps who in some cases are Tony winners, such as Cumming, Chenoweth, Short and Krakowski, so their presence was especially heartening for Paul.

"I think it's a testament to how much they wanted to come back to the show that we were able to make it work," he says. "Because I told Apple right from the beginning, it's really important to me that we get everybody back because I wanted to feel like this is a company of actors. And now they're putting on a different show so everybody is in different roles now."