High Potential has finally landed on Disney Plus in the UK, having already been out in America, and it's utterly perfect for fans of the David Mitchell series Ludwig!
As we await Ludwig season 2, I was looking for alternative cozy crime offerings with a sense of humor and High Potential seemed to fit the bill.
Based on a French series called Haut Potentiel Intellectuel, it stars It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Kaitlin Olson as Morgan, a single mum with a skill for solving crimes.
On the surface, there doesn't seem to be that much in common between glam Morgan and corduroy-wearing John "Ludwig" Taylor, but actually, the two characters and the two shows are remarkably similar.
Just like John, Morgan is a genius who struggles to form relationships and suddenly finds herself working in a police department. Rather than searching for his missing identical twin brother by posing as him as Ludwig does, the setup here is that Morgan one night is cleaning the Los Angeles Police Department's office when she knocks a file off a desk, scattering crime scene photos. Picking up the photos she sees details the police missed. She notices the crime board assembled by the detectives has listed the dead man's wife as the suspect, but that's not what Morgan sees. She crosses out "Suspect" and writes "Victim" under it. Then, Morgan goes back to cleaning. Lieutenant Selena (Judy Reyes) realizes that Morgan is spotting details that her detectives are failing to and eventually offers her a consulting job.
The comedy-drama vibe is very similar to Ludwig, with Morgan like John always three steps ahead of the cops. And like David Mitchell, Kaitlin Olson gives a fine performance, showing that being a genius isn't all it's cracked up to be. Morgan explains she has an IQ of 160 and that she is a high potential intellectual, someone with advanced cognitive abilities, but unfortunately, this means she finds it impossible to switch off her brain.
In our interview, Kaitlin told us: "There are a lot of challenges that go along with it. You will see her struggle. It's a part of the show that I love and is very important. It would be such a disservice to this character and anybody who is either highly intelligent or neurodivergent to ignore the fact that there's a lot more that comes along with it. If we make another season I want to focus more on that."
High Potential has a case-a-week format and also like Ludwig there's a deeper story. In Ludwig, John is trying to solve the mystery of what happened to his brother, while in High Potential Morgan is searching for the father of her eldest daughter, who disappeared when the child was just a baby.
High Potential is a lot of fun and if you like Ludwig it would be surprising if you didn't enjoy it.
You can watch High Potential now on Disney Plus (Hulu in the US), while Ludwig is available on BBC iPlayer.
