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There are countless examples of movies turned into stage musicals against all reason, the brute force of IP smashing through objections such as “the movie was perfect and can’t be easily equaled”, “this material does not actually lend itself well to cutesy production numbers” or just a plaintive “please, no!”. Schmigadoon!, however, presents a different case. This is a full-throated and boundlessly enthusiastic tribute to (and, secondarily, parody of) golden-age mid-century American musicals; it only makes sense for it to be restaged live on Broadway. The greater wonder is that Schmigadoon! somehow, by the grace of peak-streaming production levels, started life as a television show.

TV musicals are so rare that some of the most famous examples are single-episode gimmicks (see famous installments of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Scrubs) or running gags on reality-bending cartoons such as The Simpsons or Bob’s Burgers. Animation is actually where Schmiagdoon! co-creators Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio hail from. After working together at Illumination on movies including Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets, they co-created a live-action TV series about a couple (Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key) whose relationship crossroads coincide with their accidental arrival in a magical hidden world where everyone acts like they’re in an old-fashioned musical – much to her delight and his horror. It ran for two seasons and amassed a dedicated cult following before Apple canceled it.

Paul, who took charge of the series after Daurio departed early on, has adapted the show’s first season into a Broadway show. Both versions are a takeoff on, yes, Brigadoon, the 1947 musical about a magical Scottish town that is hidden from the rest of the world but reappears for a single day every 100 years. There’s no time limit on that world’s counterpart Schmigadoon – it’s very much the opposite, as Josh (Alex Brightman) and Melissa (Sara Chase) discover that they cannot leave this bucolic, ambiguously time-warped town without finding “true love” first. This challenge comes at a precarious time for their years-old relationship, as Melissa finds Josh frustratingly noncommittal while Josh feels harassed by her perfectionism. Taking a break in Schmigadoon, Melissa meets the handsome older man Doc Lopez (Ivan Hernandez), in a relationship vaguely modeled on The Sound of Music, while Josh flirts with Emma Tate (Isabelle McCalla), a schoolmarm echoing the love interest from The Music Man. (Another potential love interest echoes a character from Carousel for good measure.)

In some ways, the streamlined-for-stage version of the story renders Schmigadoon! an even closer pastiche of its inspirations. The Apple series used plenty of contemporary visual effects to simulate the style of musicals from the 1940s and 1950s on a presumably less lavish budget, while a stage version requires less such trickery; it simply reproduces that fanciful style in a heightened and frequently eye-popping fashion. There’s less dialogue, more dancing and the subtle running gag of nearly every single number receiving a postscript-style applause-milking reprise. Paul and director Christopher Gattelli enhance the material’s spectacle without sacrificing its knowing silliness. There’s a comic catharsis, for example, in how some subtextual elements of both Music Man and Sound of Music are able to be excavated and directly discussed in these spoof versions.

Yet this high-energy, crowd-pleasing production also manages the less delightful (if weirdly appropriate) feat of sometimes coming across like a film production of a beloved Broadway classic: splashy, highly faithful, yet vaguely inferior. Part of the problem is that both Brightman and Chase so often echo the spoken intonations of their familiar TV counterparts; the effect is akin to talented understudies who have been observing the real leads almost too carefully. That’s not true of everyone in the cast: Ana Gasteyer, taking over the role of the villainously prim scold Mildred Layton from Kristin Chenoweth, is a riot, bringing a welcome dose of sketch-comedy sensibility to the part. On the stagier side, McKenzie Kurtz goes for absolute broke as Betsy McDonough, the farmer’s-daughter ingenue of murky age.

With these zingy supporting performances, it’s entirely possible that those who haven’t seen the TV show will receive Schmigadoon! as an uncomplicated good time, both an affectionate send-up of shows still performed at American high schools everywhere and a tribute to why they endure despite outdated elements. But even without watching the original version, some viewers will probably anticipate certain jokes and turns – at this point, revelations of chaste queerness are practically obligatory in a Broadway showstopper, and even the friendly brand of satire on offer here ultimately feels a little soft. The non-musical portions of the TV show were sometimes at odd angles with the pure homage but also lent the characters a tension that often feels missing here. Schmigadoon! has been properly prepped and restructured for the stage. But apart from those cosmetic changes, it’s in the same boat as any number of less honorable adaptations: failing to offer much that’s truly new.