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Part Time Private Eyes

Heidi Arena & Nicola Parry get up to suburban espionage hijinks in the best of 10's Pilot Week.

In the mediocrity that is quickly shaping up as 10’s Pilot Week thank goodness for Part Time Private Eyes, a bit of suburban espionage hijinks created by its two stars Heidi Arena and Nicola Parry.

Yes in the bayside community just east of House Husbands and west of Bad Mothers is the school drop-off zone of newly-single Alex (Nicola Parry) and her pal Val (Heidi Arena), who hatch a plan to help Karen (Nadine Garner) get to the bottom of her cheating partner Ian (Alex Papps).

“We could be just like Thelma and Louise. One old one, one hot one,” suggests Val.

“Yeah but which one is….?” asks Alex.

In need of income they convince Karen to hire their services between the hours of 9am and 3pm, just enough time to still ferry their kids to school.

In subsequent scenes they stalk Ian outside his place of work, leading to physical comedy scenes on the street, in a dental office and eventually inside his own home.

Throughout it all there is good chemistry between Arena as a no-filter mum and Parry who follows her down a cockamamie rabbit-hole. It’s as if they are too-far-gone to back out of their hairbrained scheme, and it’s ok that the farce becomes more ridonkoulous as it goes on (although I could have done without the fart jokes).

Private Eyes, from CJZ, does the job of dipping a toe into the waters to see if the relationships and premise sustain. It’s a single-cam comedy with no laugh track, and the “Next Time” teaser at the end (which may well be fake) does look rather fun. All of this puts it head and shoulders above other entries in Pilot Week. Not hard, considering….

If the idea of Pilot Week is to give artists room to flex their creative muscles then Arena & Parry should be encouraged to explore.

8:30pm Tuesday on 10.

11 Responses

  1. I hope this is better than Street Smart (which set a new low for Oz comedy) and Mr Black. I admire CJZ’s commitment to local comedy, but so far their output hasn’t actually been funny. The fart jokes you refer to seem like desperation on the part of the writers.

  2. I was really excited that 10 tired something different with Pilot Week last year and i was happy when they announced it was coming back after modest/middling reviews for the majority of last years pilots. (still dont understand how Trial By Kyle is a legitimate show that more actual money was invested in, but thats my own opinion)
    However outside of ‘Part time Private eyes’ its seems like they green light the same show 3x times over.
    If they wanted another trashy reality series why not just take time to develop something and leave pilot week to actual creatives.

    Would be great if they enhanced the public participation with an ‘open submissions’ with like 5 realistic pitches being chosen by 10 and the top voted submission getting the green light to screen as part of pilot week each year. (if it continues)
    Sorry to add to the never ending commenters of ‘what 10 should do’

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