The original “Pitch Perfect” movie came out 10 years ago, full of winking bombast about competing collegiate a cappella groups with their love of pop music and an eye on The Big Show — aka their quest for glory, to borrow from the title of the nonfiction book upon which the movie was based. There were other influences, of course. A show like “Glee” walked so a movie like “Pitch Perfect” could run. And run it did, with two sequels to follow. That brings us to the Peacock TV series continuation created by Megan Amram and Elizabeth Banks: “Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin.”
Bumper, if you will recall, is the man-child played by Adam Devine. Now in early middle age but boyish as ever, he’s a doofus working security at his old college campus and still dreaming of singing stardom when he finds out from an old a cappella rival — Flula Borg’s Pieter, from the first sequel — that one of his TikTok videos has gone viral in Germany.
Move to Berlin and work with me, Pieter tells him. I can make you a star. Are you serious, Bumper asks? Pieter: “I’m German, of course I’m serious.” So off to Berlin he goes. It’s a premise that seems specifically designed around the question: How do we bring back Borg in a way that makes sense?
