Before And After

The Good Place debuted its fourth and final season last week at 9 pm (8 Central) on Thursday.  It's one of the few network shows I never miss, and because of that, I also checked out the new NBC sitcoms at 8:30 and 9:30, Perfect Harmony and Sunnyside. (Along with The Good Place, all these titles sound so positive.) Both shows are built around a name as the lead, and filled in with a lesser-known or unknown ensemble cast.

Perfect Harmony stars Bradley Whitford (best known for The West Wing) as Arthur Cochran, a grumpy former music professor at Princeton who moves back to his wife's hometown during her last days.  After she dies (we start the show post-death) he's about to kill himself, but he hears a choir in a church.  A bad choir.  He comes in to insult everyone, but before the show is over, he's in charge--mostly out of spite because he hates the megachurch and its choir up the interstate.

There are a handful of characters in the choir, all with their quirks.  The best known of these actors is Anna Camp of the Pitch Perfect movie series. (I'm assuming the actors do their own singing, though I'm not sure.) Her character's got a young son and is separated from one man in the choir while another hopes to be with her.  By the end of the premiere, Whitford has whipped the choir into shape--I would think that would require people with good voices to begin with, but I guess he's also sort of a miracle worker.

The show has comedy and music, and goes down easy.  I'm not sure if there's enough there to keep me watching each week, but I suppose I'll give it another chance.  The same goes for Sunnyside. (I'm feeling pretty charitable in an age of 500 TV shows.)

Sunnyside is created by and stars Kal Penn, who's best known for the Harold & Kumar films (he's Kumar) and for playing Dr. Kutner on House. He also spent some time working at the Office of Public Engagement in the Obama White House.  In his new show, he's Garrett Modi, a former New York City council member who started out idealistic but became corrupt and was kicked out of office.  He has no money and lives with his sister, but hopes to get back into politics.

He'll do anything for money and finds himself with a group of people trying to become citizens.  Once again, they're all quirky--even quirkier than Arthur Cochran's choir.  They include two wealthy, so-hip-they're-out-of-it Asian siblings, a Dominican immigrant who holds down seemingly countless jobs, and a guy who was a surgeon in Ethiopia but now drives a cab.  I didn't know any of the actors, though I'm pretty sure I've seen the Dominican somewhere or other.

Modi is willing to take their money on false pretenses, since he no longer has the clout to do much for them.  By the end of the half hour, however, he wants to do the right thing and help them.

As in Perfect Harmony, the cast is game, though I'm not sure how much quirkiness I can take. I assume as the show goes along (if it does go along), we'll discover more facets to these characters and see if they can last the long run.  What I don't quite see is how long you can have people trying to become citizens, even if the process in real life takes a long time. (If the show runs for years, will each season offer new hopeful immigrants while the older ones either make it or get deported?)

For a couple decades the NBC comedy lineup was a powerhouse.  It hasn't been that way since The Big Bang Theory took over the night on CBS.  Now that Big Bang is gone (though Young Sheldon remains), perhaps some new buds can grow in the sunlight.  I guess we'll see.  More important, we'll see if these shows, promising but not yet there, get better.