In February 2014, when the Psych team announced that they were already in the midst of the show’s final season, a small ember of hope existed for fans of TV’s longest-running fake psychic detective series (sorry, The Mentalist) in the form of a remark from USA Network President Chris McCumber, who said, “somehow I don’t believe we’ve heard the last of Shawn and Gus.”
A year later, when we spoke to show star James Roday, we asked him about the possibility of a movie. But while he couldn’t commit, he did say interest was there. And now that interest has matured into an actual, watch-it-with-your-face project in the form of a Christmastime TV movie.
Here are the details from USA Network’s press release:
Fake psychic detective Shawn Spencer (James Roday) and his best friend, Burton “Gus” Guster (Dulé Hill), will team up once again, returning to USA for the holidays, when the two-hour PSYCH: THE MOVIE premieres in December 2017. PSYCH creator Steve Franks co-wrote the movie with Roday and will also direct the special.
Lassiter (Timothy Omundson), Juliet (Maggie Lawson), Henry (Corbin Bernsen) and Chief Vick (Kirsten Nelson) will also return for the movie, which picks up three years after the series finale. The ambitious friends — along with some returning fan-favorite characters — come together during the holidays after a mystery assailant targets one of their own. A comedic thrill ride follows, as the wild and unpredictable PSYCH team pursues the bad guys, justice …and food!
Psych fans and ultimate TV completists will remember that the show wrapped up with Shawn rejoining Juliet (his lover in the nighttime) in San Francisco after she had left Santa Barbara for a new job. Naturally, Gus (aka MC Clap Yo Handz) went along for the ride and the show seemingly wrapped up cleanly and nicely with Shawn getting to both maintain the status quo and shake up his life in a positive way.
Because of that solid resolution, some may wonder why there’s a need for a Psych movie, but to those people, all I can say is…
In all seriousness, this is the age of zombie television where nothing stays dead. Shows have come back after longer absences with more complete endings after being fully exhausted creatively. Psych was clever and light, had some juice left when it left the air a relative blink ago, and it showed abundant affection for its fans and those bits of pop culture that those of us who lived through the ’80s and ’90s can’t help but geek out on. In short: it was fun, and there’s never not a need for more fun on TV. So, Psych-os will get this in December, and who knows, maybe more will come if they wish hard enough. Especially if they do that whilst being a part of a Nielsen family or while living their life as a Twitter influencer.
Also, I want to point out that the scoreboard says four Murder She Wrote movies to just the one for Psych. Just doesn’t seem fair.
