New city. New cases. New characters. New showrunners. Same chemistry. Angie Everett (Cindy Sampson) and Matt Shade (Jason Priestley) are back, and it’s like they never left.
Ending in 2021 after five seasons, Private Eyes returns to Global with a West Coast feel and name. Debuting Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on Global, Private Eyes West Coast sees private investigators Angie and Shade swapping Toronto for Victoria.
When viewers last saw the couple, they shared a kiss in the then-series finale. Now, the duo are married, have an infant son, and are trying to figure out just what to do next. The same could be said for Sampson and Priestley. They both shared concerns over whether a series reboot would actually work. After all, a new setting, new supporting characters and new showrunners in Sarah Dodd and Jennifer Kassabian might have been too much change for viewers. It could have been a massive failure.
“Absolutely it could have,” Priestley acknowledges during a recent interview. “But Jennifer and Sarah, when they came in to pitch their idea for where Shade and Angie are now five years later, their idea was so original and so charming. They both just absolutely overperformed. They were fantastic partners and super creative people and we just had a great time with them.”
“Five years had passed since we aired,” Sampson says. “There was this cliffhanger to the original series that I feel like the fans, even us as cast, the crew, it was left hanging out there for someone to do something about it. And this was the natural progression. I never thought that it would work and it works so beautifully. Shade and Angie being married, having a kid, solving cases together.”
That uncertainty extended to new showrunners Jennifer Kassabian (Hudson & Rex) and Sarah Dodd (Cardinal). The duo, who had never worked together, pitched ideas that Corus Entertainment, Lionsgate Canada and Pillar/Segan liked, so they paired the two.
“Well, I see them married,” Kassabian recalls. “They’ve been together ever since that first kiss. They would have a kid. It would be a show about a mom getting back into the game. And the little catchphrase of, will they or won’t they for fans has now been turned into they worked out, but can they make it work?”
“I pitched the show set in Victoria, which is my hometown, born and raised,” Dodd recalls. “The producers put us on a Zoom call on a Sunday afternoon and we talked for about three hours about the show, about life, about how we like to work, all kinds of things.”
The result? The heart and humour that made the original series so much fun to watch remains intact, with a refresh of setting and supporting characters. Among those characters are Angie’s half-brother, Will Federgreen (David Kaye), who helps take care of the couple’s son when they’re working past his bedtime, Detective Violet Xiao (Olivia Cheng) of Vancouver Island PD’s Major Crimes Unit and Raine Atebe (Khamisa Wilsher), a confident computer whiz.
Kassabian notes that, as viewers met Shade’s family in the original series, it was important to learn more about Angie’s family. An antagonist and helpful team member—so integral to a procedural—meant the creation of Violet and Raine.
Dodd explains the move west sets up Angie and Shade as fish out of water, key to introducing supporting characters.
The west coast shift also offers the series an opportunity to follow Angie and Shade’s evolution as parents.
“Angie was always described as this feisty lone wolf who did things by herself,” Sampson says. “Now she’s really embracing this beautiful life that she’s created. In the same respect, Shade gets a second chance at parenthood. Whereas he wasn’t necessarily there during Jules’ formative years as much as he would’ve wanted to be, this is his second time around. There’s still that very heartfelt family element throughout the whole series, and then we throw in a bunch of ridiculousness on top of it to make it fun.”
Private Eyes West Coast airs Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on Global.
Images courtesy of Corus Entertainment.
