‘Perfect Harmony’ Creator Teases the ‘Bad News Bears of Church Choirs’

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Bradley Whitford and Anna Camp are making sweet music together in Perfect Harmony!

The West Wing favorite plays down-on-his-luck Arthur Cochran. After his wife’s death, the former music professor is ready to end it all when he stumbles into a choir rehearsal at a small-town church. Somehow he gets roped into helping the congregation’s oddball singers — led by single mom Ginny (Pitch Perfect‘s Camp, above, with Whitford) — prep for a competition.

“I would call them the Bad News Bears of church choirs,” series creator Lesley Wake Webster says. “This is a ragtag underdog [group] that takes all comers.”

Competitive, misanthropic Arthur is determined to whip these warblers into songbirds in order to show up a rival megachurch. But he’ll learn a thing or two from his students as well, says Webster, who based the character on her own grandfather.

Perfect Harmony “is about the power of music to bring people who are very different together,” she says. “If you stand with other people and sing, no matter what their beliefs are, it’s really hard to dislike them.”

Perfect Harmony, Series Premiere, Thursday, September 26, 8:30/7:30c, NBC