I Watch TV: Private Eyes

Private Eyes (Season Four)

I wrote up season one of Private Eyes in this rather silly post, and seem to have skipped reviewing the ones in between. THE STORY SO FAR: Ex-hockey star Matt Shade has teamed up with Angie Everett, and they are private investigators in Toronto. Each week they find themselves in an unusual situation trying to solve a crime. People keep shipping them but they keep avoiding that and getting involved with other people (Angie is long distance dating Tex, a PI from Seattle; Shade goes out with Willow, an actress, though they stumble backwards into getting her a big role playing a PI so she leaves town).

This season they have a variety of wacky adventures including Shade’s dad, having taken a food truck to a festival, being accused of armed robbery; the stars of a Mexican telenovela getting attacked; while stranded on an island for a wedding trying to catch a thief; blackmail and threats against a golfer while Shade is at a celebrity golf tournament; and weirdness going on at a UFO cult. You know, the usual stuff.

The wedding is between Danica Powers, the police detective who they bring in and occasionally spar with, and her journalist girlfriend. Their romance ran through the season and paid off in that episode which was nice. Meanwhile Shade’s daughter is off to college and he keeps trying to avoid his over-protective-father-ness.

In all, it’s fun, charming, a bit dependent on the gimmick of the week, sometimes assuming our interest in the characters a bit much. It gets a little sickly sometimes when it’s about family, and then sometimes harder edged – when everything is going wrong at the wedding and Danica comments on Shade’s divorce he says that he and his ex still love each other, they just don’t love living together and they finally put the relationship in the text and it makes sense and also is too real and too sweet at the same time. That’s the show – two charming PIs mostly having fun comic adventures that occasionally wreck lives.

Watch This: It’s a crime show that’s fun and occasionally clever
Don’t Watch This: You want something more to your crime show