TV Review: High Potential

Cute little show.

Once upon a time, we used to have all sorts of detectives — many of whom were not police. Agatha Christie had Belgian detectives who were ex-cops, little old ladies who did the thinking for a cop. She had more cops be murders than I remember actual officers make arrests.

Magnum, PI and Murder, She Wrote dominated the 80s, and the latter went into the 90s. Since then, we’ve had “official police consultants,” whether they be Dick Van Dyke in Diagnosis Murder, Patrick Jayne in The Mentalist, or even Castle.

While I will not say that ABC’s High Potential will be on par with any of the above, I will say that it is a fun little show. It really feels like one of the few TV shows worth commenting on this season.

The premise is simple: Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) is a janitor at an LAPD precinct; one night, she trips over a murder board, and catches a detail the cops had missed. Turns out that Morgan is a 180-IQ flake with three kids, an ex-husband, and a husband who’s MIA…or KIA… and a habit of not playing well with other.

While I would normally said it feels like someone wanted to make a murder mystery out of Good Will Hunting, but decided that Matt Damon was a boring human being. And he is. In fact, this is adapted from a French television show, HPI (High Potential Individual). It looks like they have changed little from the original premise, not even changing the names.

Morgan is soon assigned to be a consultant with homicide, attached to officer Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata). He’s about as pleased with being burdened with a civilian as Kate Beckett ever was with Castle. Morgan shows up to crime scenes in trashy outfits, hair that looks like it was combed with static electricity, and she has less respect for police rules and regulations than Castle ever did.

Despite all of this, Morgan Gillory never comes off as a boss bitch. She has a collection of flaws and quirks that make her visibly imperfect, and it’s clear that she’s doing the best she can with the personality issues she has. Not to mention that she’s got three children to wrangle on top of solving the crime of the week. She isn’t nasty or mean, even if she is arrogant.

Thankfully, most of the potentially annoying aspects that could come from this setup are sidelined. Most of the focus is on the crime of the week. They’re cute little puzzles, even if they are in the form of police procedurals. Unlike some procedurals, you can actually figure out who done it, and they play fair. (This is in contrast with some Castle episodes, where you only meet the killer for a minute at the start of the episode, and one wants to call the killer “Old Man Jenkins.”)

Unlike Murder In A Small Town, High Potential is very fluffy. While Murder In A Small Town tries to understand and run on character as well as a murder, this is largely the puzzle of the week. It’s very much entertainment popcorn.