High Potential is high-octane, fast-talking nonsense that will hit you right in the Columbos

Life has been a little grim of late, hasn’t it? We’re witnessing the creation of a new fascist, authoritarian world order. Apparently, everyone on Earth has the equivalent of a plastic spoon’s worth of microplastics in their brains (which explains a lot). And also, it’s still a bit chilly and I’m sick of wearing a scarf. So, what are we beleaguered humans meant to do? 

Well, if you need a boost, you could do worse than High Potential. It premiered last year but there are so many shows everywhere all at once that I can’t keep up. Also, the lifecycle of a TV series these days is just as confusing as everything else. It can hang around for years in the recesses of some streaming service you don’t have, then all of a sudden there are millions of memes about it and people at work are looking at you in disgust saying, “I can’t believe you haven’t watched season eight of Sleeverance.” 

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Anyway, High Potential is about Morgan, a cleaner for the LAPD who has CRIME SOLVING SUPERPOWERS, and if that doesn’t hit you right in the Columbos, I don’t know what will. Not only that, but she dresses in thigh-high boots and leopard-print furs and can calculate her grocery bill just by looking at the shopping, a skill I dearly wish I had.  

It’s all down to her high potential intelligence, which doesn’t make for a very exciting title for a TV show, but gives her spidey senses, photographic memory and the ability to spot tiny details that bumbling detectives miss. All while she’s mopping the floors.  

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Although this is a remake of a French detective series called HPI, as you can probably tell, we’re not talking sensitive Euro noir here: this is high-octane, fast-talking, crack-the-case-by-the-end-of-the episode nonsense and I am here for it. Yes, there are a few things that don’t make much sense, including the fact that she’s immediately welcomed on board by the LAPD as their token single-mom-cleaner crime-fighter. But if Jessica Fletcher can do it, so can this sassy lady.  

Anyway, plot, shmot. Kaitlin Olson of It’s Always Sunny in Philadephia fame plays Morgan with such caffeinated energy that you’re hooked from the beginning. She makes perky Kristen Bell look like a stoned teenager who’s just woken up from a long nap, and her eerily blue eyes excellently express the character’s constantly moving thought processes.

Morgan also has a good foil in the form of sceptical yet handsome police chief Adam Karadec, AKA James Holt from The Devil Wears Prada. She’s kooky and IQ-ooky, he’s procedural and grumpy. It’s a match made in heaven. 

Yes, cases get wrapped up rather too neatly and everyone is talking so much that it doesn’t leave much room for nuance or profound emotion. So what? The show was created by Drew Goddard, whose credits include The Good Place, so it’s packed with action, zingers and aha moments. So many in fact, that you don’t even notice when credulity is being stretched like a pair of fishnets in a tumble dryer. 

One word of warning: it moves so fast that you might have a sensory meltdown if you binge watch it, so I recommend a break in between episodes to regroup. It’s also incredibly verbal – if you got Morgan and Lorelai Gilmore in the same room they could generate so many words per minute that the universe would fold in on itself and implode. 

Still, I’m very happy to let someone else do the cognitive gymnastics for a change while I sit around with my gob open like an iguana watching it all joyfully unfold. I think this is exactly what my plastic-spoon brain needs.   

High Potential is available to watch now on Disney+.Lucy Sweet is a freelance journalist.

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