Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Spencer Sisters’ On The CW, Where A Mother-Daughter Team Form An Unusual Private Investigation Firm

We need shows like The Spencer Sisters, a Canadian import debuting on The CW here in the US. There’s nothing earth-shattering about it, but it stars Lea Thompson, so that’s got to count for something, right? Anyway, the reason why we need shows like this is because we need funny, light shows with good leads who banter and bicker. It’s not heavy, but it’s entertaining. Sometimes, that’s all we want from TV.

THE SPENCER SISTERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of Toronto. A woman wakes up next to her boyfriend and realizes she’s late for work.

The Gist: Darby Spencer (Stacey Farber) is a police officer for Toronto’s Metropolitan Police; she takes after her father, who died in the line of duty when she was a kid. But her detective instincts lead her to go off on her own and not follow her boss’s orders when she responds to a call. When she’s about to be given a reprimand, despite catching the guy they were searching for, she decides to quit instead. Then she gets home and sees that her boyfriend isn’t at his computer trading crypto but in his towel just after having sex with someone else.

So she needs a place to crash; after calling around, including to her high school buddy Zane (Thomas Antony Olajide) and and his husband Antonio (Rodrigo Massa) — they’re busy with their new baby — she ends up driving back to her hometown of Alder Bluffs to crash in the mansion owned by her mother, Victoria Spencer (Lea Thompson). Victoria is a famous mystery novelist, and Darby’s relationship with her is tense, to say the least; when Victoria says something critical as Darby gets out of her car, Darby complains that her mom has set a record for kvetching at her.

Their disagreement goes back to when her father was killed; she thinks her mother threw herself into her work and was never there for her when she needed it. Darby is tired of her mother’s mild narcissism — she runs with it when her agent Sarita Stark (Ayesha Mansur Gonsalves) says that she and Darby “look like sisters” — but Victoria is worried all the time because her daughter is a cop. Darby doesn’t seem to have the gumption to tell her that she quit, at least not at first.

When an old friend of Darby’s gets a call at a reading for Victoria’s new novel, saying that she’s being expelled from her grad program for plagiarism, Darby uses her detective skills — and Victoria uses her contacts and the skills she gathered writing all those mystery novels — to find out who uploaded a plagiarized paper to the school’s server.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Even with the mother-daughter issues at play, The Spencer Sisters gives off a strong Rizzoli & Isles vibe.

Our Take: Alan McCullough, who created The Spencer Sisters, is very well versed in procedurals both of the lighter (Private Eyes) and somewhat more serious (Rookie Blue) varieties. So he has the beats down; all he needed to do was plug in detectives of a somewhat different nature. There is nothing in particular about The Spencer Sisters that stands out as far as the show’s stories are concerned, so the success of the show is going to rest on the chemistry between its leads. And in that regard, the show gives us hope.

We really didn’t think we’d see Lea Thompson, who has built a highly successful career as a TV director, act in a series again, but we’re glad that she decided to return to series TV. Victoria is a somewhat different role for her; she’s not the plucky go-getter that she used to play in her 30s in shows like Caroline In The City, but we’re enjoying seeing her as a somewhat self-involved “artist” who picks on what her daughter wears and drives, among other things.

The back and forth between Thompson and Farber, who places Darby, were the best parts of the episode. The two have a lot to hash out, but it seems that, with no reason to stay in the big city, Darby is going to come back into her mother’s life and they’re going to open a private investigator business together. The contrast between the always-camera-ready Victoria and the more casual Darby will play out in how they investigate the mysteries they come across.

The show is also trying to build a world around the Spencers, with Zane, a local cop, and Antonio, who runs a local restaurant, being Darby’s confidants. There’s also Lucas Collins (Edward Ruttle), a handsome doctor who used to be Darby’s squeeze in high school. She’s still nervous around him, but has to now deal with the fact that he’s getting married to a woman named Lindsay Yip (Kaitlyn Leeb). So, while the Spencers solve mysteries, there should be other stories to deal with around Alder Bluffs.

None of it is earth shattering or unique, and we were shocked at the low stakes of the first mystery the Spencers solved together — term paper plagiarism? But the show is meant to be light and entertaining, and given how pleasant it is to watch Thompson and Farber bounce off each other, we’d have to say the show accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is entertain audiences for an hour.

Sex and Skin: None. Even when Darby’s boyfriend is sleeping with another woman, she’s hiding in the closet.

Parting Shot: When Darby decides to stay a little longer, Victoria directs her to pull her “eyesore” of a car into the garage.

Sleeper Star: We’ll go with Edward Ruttle as Lucas Collins, because there are sure to be sparks between Lucas and Darby in upcoming episodes.

Most Pilot-y Line: “You’re going to put on something less… military, right?” Victoria says to Darby, who’s wearing a pretty standard t-shirt and jeans. At least that was followed up with one of the best lines of the episode, with Darby saying, “Why don’t you pick me out something, so we can both look like Swedish airline hostesses?”

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Spencer Sisters is the type of show you might end up binging if you’re at home and not feeling great this coming fall. You’ll certainly be entertained by it, even if you don’t remember much about it after you’re done.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.