As ‘ Good Place’ says goodbye, ‘ Perfect Harmony’ says hello
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — When NBC’s “The Good Place” returns for its final season Sept. 26, it will be joined by new comedy “Perfect Harmony” ( 8: 30 p. m., WPXI- TV).
It’s surely no coincidence the show has “perfect” in its title as it brings to mind the “Pitch Perfect” movies both in theme and a shared star, Anna Camp, who plays a nice character instead of an antagonist.
Bradley Whitford (“The West Wing”) stars as a stuffy Princeton professor who winds up leading a Kentucky church choir. Culture/ style clashes ensue.
Series creator/ writer Lesley Wake Webster (“Speechless,” “Life in Pieces”) said “Perfect Harmony” is about people who become family.
“In my experience in various church choirs and glee clubs, it’s really hard to dislike other people if you’re standing in a circle singing with them,” she said during an NBC press conference on the last day of the Television Critics Association summer 2019 press tour.
The funnier- than- expected “Perfect Harmony” is a more conventional comedy than the series that follows at 9 p. m. Thursdays, “The Good Place,” a smart, clever program that’s brought conversations about philosophical concepts to prime time.
As “Good Place” enters its last season, Eleanor ( Kristen Bell) and the gang of deceased friends — along with handler Michael ( Ted Danson) — embark on a new experiment to help four newcomers become better people in an effort to prove their own moral worthiness.
Bell said she was driving when series creator Mike Schur called to say it was time to end the series. She said she trusted his instincts and made him promise to write her a new show.
“I’m grateful it ended with as much integrity with which it started,” Danson said at the show’s final press conference.
Meta ‘ 90210’ revival
The stars of Fox’s six- episode “BH90210” ( 9 p. m. Wednesday, WPGH- TV), a meta, quasi- revival that finds the stars of the 1990s- era “Beverly Hills, 90210” playing versions of themselves, say their characters on the show are a mix of fact and fiction.
“We kind of wanted to leave it for the audience [ to decipher] what’s based on something real, what’s totally fictionalized, and we think they will have a lot of fun doing that,” said Tori Spelling, who took the reins as a producer, co- creating “BH90210” with co- star Jennie Garth and the show’s writers.
Garth said the “BH90210” characters, who are trying to mount a new iteration of the original series, begin as real people filtered through tabloid reports.
“That was a great launching point for a lot of our storytelling because it’s a perception,” she said, “and for us to sort of take back the power, spin it and use it to tell these stories was a really interesting angle for everybody involved.”