7 hours ago
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There is an episode of 30 Rock in which the star of the SNL-like show-within-the-show, Jenna Maroney, gets the lead role in a planned new police procedural: Goodlooking. She solves crimes by being really good at looking at things. Lo, and not for the first time where 30 Rock’s inventions are concerned, it has come to pass. And gloriously so. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … High Potential.
Kaitlin Olson (Hacks, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and no relation to the twins) plays Morgan, a feisty single mother of three, owner of many fantastic furry coats and a cleaner at the local police department. This includes the homicide offices, which is where she accidentally knocks a file to the ground and – as she gathers the spilled pages and photographs back together – solves the crime. She is a “good looker”, you see. I’m sorry, no. She is, we learn when the police tackle her about the untoward alterations made to their crime board by a civilian, a “high potential intellectual”. This is different from merely being clever. It means you also have great creativity, a photographic memory, obsessional tendencies and an ability to see further into brick walls than most – including grumpy police detectives.
The grumpiest of them all is Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata), though he is also the handsomest, which takes the edge off. It is with him whom Morgan is paired by Karadec’s boss, Selena Soto (Judy Reyes), when she gives her a job as a consultant to the homicide department. If you are now thinking “I’m pretty sure this is not a thing police bosses can unilaterally do whenever they happen across a good looker”, may I gently suggest that you leave now and find something more to your exacting tastes.
Because what we have here is gorgeous, brilliant trash TV, done so well that it should be showered with special awards. It is so much desperately needed, perfectly paced fun that, like Kenneth Tynan before me with Look Back in Anger, I don’t believe I could be friends with anyone who doesn’t love it.
A huge part of its success is down to Olson’s incandescent performance. It’s a high-wire act, balancing the need for enough energy to keep the fundamentally preposterous premise on the road without becoming wearisome, and enough charm to keep us rooting for her even as her successes stack up and her knowledge of everything from seasonal wind patterns in LA to trunk-opening mechanisms in different car models makes her increasingly incredible – and highly potentially irritating to her colleagues and viewers.
It is, in truth, something of a Marmite turn. But if people approach it in the right spirit, there should be far more lovers than haters, and allow the show to bring Olson the kudos she has long been due as a vital but slightly overlooked member of the It’s Always Sunny cast.
High Potential has a more-or-less absurd case of the week, involving a dead body here, a young ex-con thrown off a roof but surviving there, and no evidence at all until Morgan shows up and notices a single dusted trinket or missing curtain tie-back that solves the whole thing. Like I say, don’t go expecting Line of Duty or The Wire and you’ll be fine. Think more Jessica Fletcher with a 160 IQ (no disrespect to the great woman, of course), mounting debts and a stroppy teen at home who’s alienated by her mother’s brilliance and resentful of her father’s absence.
Ah yes – overarching mystery alert! To prevent us getting bored by the unavoidably repetitive case-of-the-week formula, we have the abiding mystery of what happened to Roman, the love of Morgan’s life and the father of her first child. He went out for diapers 15 years ago and never came back. The police declined to investigate. Morgan agrees to take the consultancy job only if Soto promises to look into things properly. It doesn’t matter. You watch for Olson and to see what heights of absurdity the writers can reach each episode, how much esoteric knowledge they can cram into the plot and still make it work, like jazz musicians riffing to the point of chaos then bringing it safely back home. High potential for joy and delight; if not, The Wire is still available and you can leave the rest of us to our fun.
