The biggest ratings hit of the last 20 years in France, the series “HPI” arrives Tuesday in the United States, with an adaptation renamed “High Potential” which nourishes the same ambitions: to dust off the police series, with playful cases and family humor.
This “remake” transports the plot from Lille to Los Angeles. Instead of Morgane Alvaro, an extravagant cleaning lady with an IQ of 160 played by Audrey Fleurot, we follow Morgan Gilliroy, another single mother played by Kaitlin Olson and recruited by the police for her “high intellectual potential”.
This offbeat heroine will try to make her mark on the ABC channel, after having boosted TF1’s audience figures in France.
“I’ve never seen a character like that take us on a detective story on television,” enthuses Todd Harthan, the show’s head writer. “It kind of reminds me of what I loved about ‘House,’ I’ve never seen a doctor like that before, it was such a tour de force that you had to watch.”
The series “has the potential to reach a huge audience,” he told AFP on the sidelines of a press conference in July.
In France, “HPI” became a phenomenon since its launch in 2021. Its episodes have sometimes brought together more than 10 million viewers, something not seen since 2005, a time when television was not suffering from competition from streaming platforms.
– Big mouth –
“High Potential” seems to apply the same recipes, according to the pilot revealed to the press.
The American Morgan is also a loudmouth, with an immoderate taste for flashy outfits and a stubborn distrust of the cops. Not to mention a life led to the penny and punctuated by three children to support.
“I wanted her to be working class, to have a hard time trusting people. (…) She’s eccentric and doesn’t necessarily follow the rules,” says Kaitlin Olson, who admits she was inspired by a few episodes of “HPI.” “I saw all that in the French series and I was really drawn to it.”
Her encyclopedic culture drawn from documentaries, her lightning-fast calculation skills and her photographic memory make her an investigator who is as unbearable as she is gifted.
Enough to annoy a doubtful Inspector Karadec, who could do without this tornado stuck in his paws by his superiors.
Daniel Sunjata takes on the role of Mehdi Nebbou here, with a disturbing physical resemblance.
“We could probably be cousins,” jokes the dark, bearded 52-year-old. “If it helped me get the part, great!”
The American, however, limited himself to the first episode of the French series.
“I didn’t want to be influenced,” he insists. “We’re trying to do our own thing.”
– Mimicry –
The pilot’s mimicry remains striking, however. Not only is the violence of the crime carefully concealed, as is the case with family entertainment, but the French plot is also followed almost to the letter.
Similar shots and dialogues, identical twists and turns: the American series goes so far as to use the same playful music when Morgan embarks on one of his convoluted reasonings to advance the investigation.
“As we go forward in the series, my instinct is that there will be more original episodes that don’t borrow anything from the French series,” promises Todd Harthan. “We want to create our own identity.”
The showrunner praises the possibilities offered by this “totally atypical” and “more sophisticated” series than traditional police series.
Owned by Disney, ABC has reserved a prime slot for “High Potential” on Tuesdays at 10 p.m.
It remains to be seen whether Americans will be as taken with Morgan as they were with Inspector “Monk”, an unusual cop suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
Especially since, unlike in France, where the concept of HPI has been in vogue for a good ten years to explain the behavior of certain children, this syndrome is largely unknown in the United States.
Like the rest of the cast, Kaitlin Olson admits she didn’t know it existed.
“When I heard about it, I thought: Is this a French thing where people are called high-potential intellectuals?”
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