French hit detective show comes to US with 'High Potential'

The biggest French television hit of the past 20 years arrives on American screens Tuesday with "High Potential," a family-friendly detective comedy with an ultra-smart twist.

Adapted into English from the French series "HPI" and transplanted from Lille to Los Angeles, the ABC series stars Kaitlin Olson ("It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia") as a cleaning woman who is recruited by police due to her brilliant intellect.

Showrunner Todd Harthan said Olson's character -- a single mother of three, with an IQ of 160, originally played by French actress Audrey Fleurot -- is one of the show's "secret ingredients" that drew him on board.

"I haven't seen this kind of character take us through an investigative case on TV," he told AFP.

"Wildly unorthodox" and "more sophisticated" than a typical police procedural, the show's English-language adaptation has "the potential to reach a huge audience," predicted Harthan, speaking on the sidelines of a press conference this summer.

Certainly in France, "HPI" quickly became a phenomenon after its launch in 2021. Some episodes have drawn as many as 10 million viewers.

Ratings on that level have not been seen since 2005, in a different era before television was overtaken and fragmented by streaming platforms.

The show's name comes from the term "high intellectual potential," a term widely known in France for children with extraordinary cognitive intelligence.

Olson's Morgan has an encyclopedic knowledge, derived mainly from binge-watching documentaries, as well as lightning-fast calculation skills and a photographic memory.

But she is also a loudmouth, with a penchant for flashy outfits, and a deep-rooted disdain for cops who she only reluctantly agrees to work for.

With three children to support, she struggles financially, counting every penny she earns.

"I did want her to feel very working class -- very much like she has to rely upon herself, doesn't necessarily trust anyone else, has been let down by other people in the past," said Olson.

Morgan is also "quirky" and "doesn't necessarily follow the rules" added Olson, who was attracted to the role after watching the French series.

All of this makes her invaluable -- and infuriating -- to police investigators. Among them is Detective Karadec, played by Daniel Sunjata, who has Morgan foisted upon him by his boss.

Sunjata told AFP he only watched the first episode of the French original, as he did not want to be overly influenced by it.

"We're trying to make this our own," he said.

- 'Our own identity' -

Still, the show borrows several elements from its source material, such as a family-friendly policy of leaving the violent crimes off-screen.

The pilot episode of "High Potential" follows the original "HPI" almost beat for beat.

The US version even borrows the same playful music from the original series, as its heroine deciphers clues and cracks complex cases.

But Harthan said that "as we get deeper in the series," it will gradually diverge more from the French format, "just because we want to create our own identity."

If it succeeds, "High Potential" will follow in a tradition of hit US shows about high-functioning misanthropes.

"Monk," about a brilliant homicide investigator with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), ran for eight acclaimed seasons on the USA Network.

And the lead character in "HPI" reminded showrunner Harthan of "what I loved so much about 'House,'" the wildly popular and long-running Fox medical drama, which starred Hugh Laurie.

"I'd never seen a doctor like that before, it was such a tour-de-force character that you had to watch."

"High Potential" will air in a prime slot at 10:00 pm Tuesday on the Disney-owned ABC network.