Less successful, though, is its odd real-life counterpart, “Encore!,” which maybe should be called “High School Musical: Adults.” The premise, at least, is a gold mine: People who performed together in a musical in high school reunite years later to do it all again. But the moments of emotional depth and humanity are rare — though sometimes quite touching — and the moments of cringing and overproduction are plentiful.

“Encore!” actually premiered in 2017, with a little-seen one-off episode on ABC; Disney Plus made two new episodes available to press, one that restages a 1996 production of “Annie” and the second that restages a 2007 production of “Beauty and the Beast.” Is “Annie” an odd choice for high schoolers and an even odder choice for adults? Is 2007 maybe not long enough ago to create the we-were-young-once resonance the show is trying so hard for? These are among the unanswered questions.

It’s a forced setting in forced circumstances, and the show never shakes that sense of contrivance in the same the way that, for example, “Queer Eye” does. Five days to put on a musical would be near impossible even in professional circumstances, and so for amateurs — almost all of whom have not been in any kind of performance scenario since high school — it feels weirdly lose-lose. Attempts to nudge people toward breakthroughs feel awkward at best, and genuinely painful at worst. I needed several breaks to get through the episodes.

The most touching part of “Encore!” — and, weirdly, the opposite of what happens in “High School Musical” — is the reverence with which everyone speaks of their high school drama teachers, who are also back for the production and wind up in roles in the musicals. “He bought my cap and gown,” one woman says in the second episode. It should be a bigger moment; it’s a big deal, something that could seem small but looms incredibly large. But the show blows past it.