Sight Unseen in a 2024 Canadian Cop Show/Detective Drama aired in Canada by CTV and in the US through The CW. It stars Dolly Lewis (in her first major role), Agam Darshi, Daniel Gillies and Jarod Joseph.
Vancouver Police Department (VPD) homicide detective Tess Avery decided to retire after she's diagnosed as being clinically blind due to Leber Neuropathy. A police encounter nearly killed her and her partner, Jake Campbell, prior to being diagnosed. She then uses an app called EyesUp to get around, where she's assisted by Sunny Patel, a woman living in New York City with a case of agrophobia. Matt Alleyne helps out with his technical expertise from time to time after Avery is retained by the VPD as a police consultant due to her LEO experience.
Tess decides to use the opportunity as a private citizen to examine unsolved cases back from her time in the VPD, although she does take on cases where the department is legally in a dead end.
Not to be confused with the 2009 TV movie of the same name.
Sight Unseen contains examples of:
- Alliterative Name:
- After Tess retires from the force, Jake is paired with Leo Li.
- Tess' low-vision coach is named Mia Moss.
- Bad Samaritan: In the pilot, the perp of the week is a home-care specialist who's been kidnapping young women related to his clients.
- Bittersweet Ending: "Lucas" ends with Tess managing to prove her brother's innocence in a murder case, but Jake is suspended for covering up Tess' connection to the case, and Tess decides she should take some time off from consulting.
- Buddy Cop Show: A unique version of this show is that Tess and Sunny are not physically together since they live in two different cities, but they work on solving cases through technology with a wireless camera and Bluetooth earpiece.
- Bullying the Disabled: In "Matt", the murder of the week arose out of members of a swim team brutally hazing an autistic teammate. After she ended up being too injured to compete, the coach found out and intended to kick the offending members off the team, resulting in one of them freaking out and beating her to death.
- Dream-Crushing Handicap: Tess' impending blindness brings an abrupt end to her career as a homicide detective. Meanwhile, Sunny's hopes of seeing the world have been stymied by her severe agoraphobia.
- Fake Video Camera View: Sunny helps Tess out in visually analyzing crime scenes by using the wireless camera she wears on her clothes in the streets of Vancouver.
- Hidden Depths: "Luke" reveals that Leo Li studied art history in college, and thus he quickly recognizes the victim of the week as a famous painter, and is only too happy to explain the man's work to his colleagues.
- Instant Humiliation Just Add Youtube: This was used as a threat in "Matt" against Jewel, a swimmer who's autistic and suffered brutal hazing from her teammates. In order to keep her quiet, queen bee Kendra recorded it and threatened uploading the video, knowing this would be used for humiliating Jewel (whose autism makes the idea even worse than usual).
- It's Personal:
- In "Jake", Tess horns in on a John Doe case that Jake is investigating because she thought the victim might be her brother, who's been missing for a while.
- In "Matt", Tess is brought in to help investigate a murder at the pool where she swims. The victim also happens to have been a friend of Matt's.
- In "Lucas", Tess' younger brother Lucas is the main suspect in the murder of an artist.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: In "Sunny", Tess' investigation into a hit-and-run accident leads her to a deliberate murder.
- My Greatest Failure: When Tess and her brother Lucas were still kids, their parents died and despite Tess' best efforts to keep them together, Lucas ended up in foster care. It took her years to get him back, and by the time they were reunited, he'd become a different person, deeply bitter about Tess losing him. Tess has never forgiven herself for it.
- Police Are Useless: After Tess retires from the VPD, she thinks that the department is not able to pursue all avenues in a case whenever she takes one. It's suggested by Jake that the reason the case goes on a dead end is because they believe some cases have a likely chance of not being solved when strong evidence is not discovered.
- Shout-Out: In "Sunny", Patel tells Tess to infiltrate a party by using the name of Irene Adler. Tess lampshades the choice because she's a known nemesis for Sherlock Holmes.note
- Spotting the Thread: In the pilot, Tess realizes that something is off about Kelly Chan's abduction when her knee bangs into an open drawer in the kitchen, indicating to her that someone opened multiple drawers looking for something.
- Straight Gay: Lucas acts very average, so until he tells Tess about his boyfriend, the fact he's gay is unknown to the audience.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Sunny Patel serves as Tess' eyes, operating from her apartment in New York City.
- Wham Episode:
- "Tess": Tess didn't fire her pistol at a hostile suspect is because she's being clinically blind. She didn't even mention it to her superiors or her colleagues. For what they know, she left the department due to stress.
- "Sunny": Tess tells Jake that she left the VPD because she's blind and not because of stress on the job. He takes it well. The main suspect involved in the death of Charles Adam is his own wife, who placed his unconscious body in the lake. It's later revealed that she did this on purpose, despite telling her son Ben that she wouldn't kill him.
- "Jake": Adrian, the missing person, was killed as he wanted to muscle in on cuts based on a credit card skimming racket ran by Tristan in order to get out of debt.
- "Mia": Olivia Banks was killed by Ania on a dispute over a lottery ticket. Tess was able to talk her down out of killing herself with a box cutter knife.
- "Razor's Edge": Sunny tells Tess that her real name is Sunita Sharma. She had an affair with one of her professors, who was married. Sunny fled to the US with a fake name after an assassin tries to get her killed. Sunny also finds the assassin's phone, which has caller ID linked to Superintendent Bennett of the VPD.
