‘Perfect Harmony’ Canceled at NBC After One Season

NBC has reportedly canceled Perfect Harmony after just one season, according to Variety. Sources at the network told reporters that Perfect Harmony will not be returning in the upcoming TV season. The show may be the latest victim of the slowed TV ecosystem during the coronavirus pandemic.

Sources said that both Perfect Harmony and Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector were canceled on Wednesday. NBC has yet to confirm this news publicly, though most of its 2019 TV season has already been planned out. Perfect Harmony was a brand new comedy, which wrapped up its only season back in January. Fans are already mourning the series on social media.

Perfect Harmony starred Bradley Whitford as Dr. Arthur Cochran, a former Princeton professor who is now the music director for a small community church in an idyllic southern town. He pulls no punches with the choir, treating them like Ivy League music students — for better or for worse.

The rest of the main cast is made up mostly of regular, working-class folks who sing in Cochran’s choir — Anna Camp as Ginny, Will Greenberg as Wayne, Spencer Allport as Cash, Tymberlee Hill as Adams, Geno Segers as Dwayne and Rizwan Manji as Reverend Jax. The show ran for 13 episodes from September to January, ending on a bit of a cliffhanger in some respects. Many fans are distraught that the series’ big questions will not be answered.

Perfect Harmony received relatively average reviews over the course of its season. At the time of this writing, the show has a 62 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a more favorable 75 percent score with audience members. On IMDb, it has 6.6 out of 10 stars, based on nearly 1,600 ratings.

“Perfect Harmony‘s precarious premise doesn’t always hit the right notes, but a charming cast and a few clever jokes inspire hope that with a little more practice it could really sing,” reads the “critical consensus” blurb on Rotten Tomatoes.

Still, even if the first season was not an all-out hit, many fans argue that Perfect Harmony at least deserved another chance to pick up some steam. The series crammed a lot into it’s shortened the first season, including some elements that were shockingly dark in tone. Viewers felt that the series might have performed better with a full-season order and a bigger marketing budget.

Sadly, Perfect Harmony‘s cancellation most likely has at least something to do with the coronavirus pandemic. The months-long halt to filming all over the world threw Hollywood into panic mode, and many fall line-ups had scripted series dropped or delayed indefinitely. Perfect Harmony is streaming now on Hulu and Peacock.