Private Eyes West Coast makes its Victoria setting a star alongside leads Cindy Sampson and Jason Priestley.darko sikman/Supplied
Jason Priestley says Canadian TV has “nothing to apologize for.” The Vancouver-born actor, who grew up in the American star system thanks to his early fame in Beverly Hills, 90210, has since established a solid reputation in Canada both in front of the camera, and behind it, as a director.
He’s had a front-row seat to plenty of shifts across the Canadian and American screen industries over the years, and he believes the acclaim Canadian series have been receiving at home and abroad is long overdue. These days, the industry isn’t just willing to use Canadian geography as part of a show’s identity, but it recognizes the market value of doing so.
Priestley’s latest foray into television is alongside Cindy Sampson for Private Eyes West Coast, a spinoff series featuring the same private detectives from Private Eyes, the Global TV series that ran from 2016 to 2021. The new iteration moves from Toronto to Victoria, B.C., where married couple Matt Shade (Priestley) and Angie Everett (Sampson) are now raising a family.
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Just as Private Eyes was set in Toronto and didn’t hide that fact, the West Coast edition doesn’t shy away from its Victoria setting. Throughout the first season’s 10 episodes, the cameras embrace the B.C. capital’s natural beauty through the eyes of the leads, who are new to the area.
Locations featured throughout the series and in the Sept. 30 premiere on Global TV and STACKTV include the Victoria Butterfly Gardens, the Fairmont Empress hotel and the Breakwater District.
When Shade and Angie return, it isn’t just the location that’s changed – their relationship enters new territory, too. Gone is the will-they-won’t-they romance. Now, it’s all about what happens after that happily ever after.
The spinoff finds Angie Everett (Sampson) and Matt Shade (Priestley) navigating family life while working as private investigators in a new city.Supplied
Private Eyes West Coast makes history as the first Canadian spinoff to feature the two original leads and the first time Corus Entertainment has greenlit a new series based on one of its original scripted series.
“We thought our show would never make it past them getting together,” Sampson says. “Now it’s a whole new community and a whole new life. Everything is starting fresh. We’ve shrugged off the old Angie and Shade and everything’s new and fresh and breezy and grown up. We’re adulting.”
Priestley, who also directs an episode and serves as an executive producer, adds that the premise lends to comedy within the drama.
“It’s a new iteration,” he says. “How do you work and live with your spouse at the same time?”
That fresh start also mirrors a shift in how location plays a part in content, where specificity is part of the sell and disguising locations is no longer the status quo.
“Even when I did Call Me Fitz, we never talked about where we were, we just said it was this side of Detroit. Which side? Nobody knew what that meant,” Priestley says. “As the world is becoming smaller and people travel more, people are interested in different regions and places they haven’t explored.”
His theory is backed by the more recent success of location-specific, Canadian-set series such as North of North, Heated Rivalry, Letterkenny and its spinoff Shoresy. In October, Netflix is launching the Newfoundland-set limited series Below, and is currently filming the PEI-set This Summer Will Be Different, which has been described as a love letter to the province.
Canadian producers are looking beyond the traditional production centres in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, and making less-familiar locations central to the story.
Notably, in October, Private Eyes West Coast is also launching on The CW in the U.S., alongside the second season of Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent. The network’s president, former Bell Media executive Brad Schwartz, has a history of bringing Canadian television to American audiences. While presiding over Pop TV, he helped introduce viewers to Schitt’s Creek. His current CW lineup has included Canadian shows Family Law, Sullivan’s Crossing, Run the Burbs, and another Priestley-led series, Wild Cards.
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“For years, American networks would never touch anything that was Canadian because they just assumed their audience didn’t understand there was a world outside America,” Priestley says. “But audiences are smart and switched on, and more accepting of shows that are shot in different places.”
Where a show is set no longer limits how far its influence reaches. For Priestley, the original Private Eyes already proved as much.
“Canadian television has nothing to apologize for,” he says. “The first Private Eyes was unabashedly Canadian, and we sold that show in 180 territories around the world. There is definitely a global appetite for the content we create here in Canada.”