ESP - Pilot

ESP Written by Christopher Lutzow Logline: A shy psychic who discovers a murderer enlists an old friend to help her gather evidence for the police. Meet Emily: a psychic. When picking up lunch, Emily touches the restaurant manager and sees the unsolved hit and run he was involved in. Going to the police station to report it, Emily witnesses a woman being arrested for obstruction and fraud after claiming to be psychic herself. Unsure what to do, Emily runs into her friend from high school, Samantha. The pair works to get the evidence the police need, by finding the car the killer used, while hiding where the clues come from. Finding that they work well together, Emily and Samantha decide to continue in their own private investigation business. I was a cop for several years, and while I enjoy procedurals, the realities of the profession often wear through when watching. DNA doesn’t come back with a match by the end of the commercial break. Partial fingerprints may not garner any matches. Suspects have lawyers in the interview rooms. Sometimes the cops just don’t have enough evidence. They’re missing that key lead they need. This is where Emily and Samantha come in: each episode Emily sees the criminal and the audience joins the pair as they try to catch the guy or gal in this updated version of the “howcatchem” procedural genre in the vein of Monk and Diagnosis Murder. Over the first season, Emily and Samantha will tail a man for worker’s comp fraud who may or may not have just murdered his boss, find a priceless family heirloom with ties to royalty on the neck of a murdered vagrant, and track down a truck that disappears on Christmas Eve filled with toys for children. Along the way Samantha, a fly by night gal, finds that for this new career to work she needs to stick around. Emily needs to hide her new budding career from her family, because Emily’s mother believes Emily doesn’t have visions but suffers from mental illness, and keeps her under tight reins.