For your weekend viewing pleasure, check out the fun and clever French mystery-crime comedy-drama series HIP – High Intellectual Potential, starring the fabulous Audrey Fleurot.
Recently, someone commented on this blog’s Facebook page, stating, “… I need a cheerful happy detective for a change,” in response to a post about a new Nordic noir crime thriller series headed our way. Well, HIP – High Intellectual Potential (HPI Haut Potentiel Intellectuel) should fit the bill.
Although the lead character in HIP – High Intellectual Potential is not a detective, she gets the crime-solving job done as a consultant. And she’s played by the über-talented Audrey Fleurot (Spiral, A French Village, Women at War, The Bonfire of Destiny).
It’s a fluke that Morgane Alvaro (Fleurot), a single mum of three young children, gets this police consulting gig. While rocking out during her cleaning job at the office of the judicial police in Lille, she knocks over a bunch of files, spots a flaw in a murder investigation, and corrects it on the crime board. In having to explain herself and her interference to Captain Adam Karadec (Mehdi Nebbou, Everything Is Fine, The Bureau), the senior detective, and Céline Hazan (Marie Denarnaud, Black Butterflies, Diva), the head of the crime squad, we learn that Morgane has an IQ of 160, and that when she notices something is off, she can’t sleep until she figures it out. With the murder case, she put two and two together without losing a wink. And after the case is solved, Céline offers her a job as a consultant. Morgane accepts on one condition: that the police reopen the missing person case of her first true love, Romain; he vanished fifteen years ago, when she was pregnant with their child, and she is absolutely certain that he didn’t just leg it from their relationship.
So begins Morgane’s partnership with Karadec, a good cop and all-around stand-up guy. He treats people well, including team members Gilles (Bruno Sanches, L’école de la vie, Hard) and Daphné (Bérangère Mc Neese, Ganglands, Balthazar), eats healthy, and is religious about his dental hygiene. But he has no patience for Morgane; she gets on his nerves and under his skin, as she is exasperating, with her brashness, insensitivity, habit of stretching the truth, the list goes on. But she is also highly observant, which is the skill that, beyond her high intellectual potential, serves their criminal investigations the most. In one episode, Morgane’s observation of Karadec’s actions, knowledge about exotic animals, and quick thinking save his life. Likewise, she can be reckless, such as when she puts herself in danger with a group of hooligans to get intel for a murder case.
As the series progresses, we see Morgane pull some stunts (often self-serving) that, frankly, make her unlikeable; we still, though, hope everything will work out for her, and if they involve Karadec, for him, too. (Well, at least I do.)
HIP – High Intellectual Potential makes a nice change from standard police procedurals, with its comedic elements, clever whodunit stories, and effective red herrings, the latter of which led me to believe that X was the killer, only for the story to reveal later that Y was, in fact, the person who did the dirty deed, in numerous episodes.
While the crime-fighting duo of opposites is a well-used trope in crime dramas, the one here is very entertaining, like in a Moonlighting kind of way. Fleurot and Nebbou play well off of each other as the colorfully-clad, Mensa-eligible Morgane and the laid-back, down-to-earth Karadec, who finds Morgane outrageous and incorrigible, yet also strangely magnetic and attractive. No, the two do not get on like a house on fire, but over time, they develop a professional partnership, and even a friendship of sorts, that works as well as can be. But there are limits.
I am anxiously waiting for Season 4, which began airing in France this past May, to arrive in the US (assuming it does), because I simply must know what happens after that dramatic Season 3 finale.
Also featuring in the series are Cypriane Gardin (The Paris Murders) and Noé Vandevoorde as Morgane’s children, Théa and Eliott; Christopher Bayemi (Luther) as forensic pathologist Docteur Bonnemain; Cédric Chevalme (Love and trouble in Paris) as Ludo, the father of Morgane’s two younger children; Rufus (Amélie) as Morgane’s elderly neighbor and occasional babysitter, Henri; Clotilde Hesme (The Returned) as Roxane Ascher, an investigator from the police’s internal affairs department; Patrick Chesnais (Missing Angel) as Morgane’s father, Serge; and Michèle Moretti (Nina) as her mother, Agnès.
The first three seasons of HIP – High Intellectual Potential are currently available for streaming in the US — in the original French-language, English-subtitled version and the English-dubbed version for subtitle-averse viewers — exclusively on Hulu.
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