HPI Haut Potentiel Intellectuel

Last night I finished watching the first season on Rai1, dubbed in Italian.

This show works.

I will get into some details to explain why and how, but in a nutshell it works simply because it does what TV should always do: entertain!

Close in spirit to Monk and The Good Cop, but even closer to The Mentalist, "HPI" delivers curiosity and fun. The premise of the series may lean heavily on the unlikely looks and attitudes of Morgane Alvaro (Audrey Fleurot) who begins to work as a consultant for the police, but what keeps your interest afloat is how well the stories are crafted.

I hate it when a cop show focuses too much on the lead characters at the expense of ignoring the credibility of the crime stories. Thankfully, HPI has not fallen into this trap. The motivations and the solid mechanisms are always there for our heroes to find out, and the interactions of Morgane Alvaro with the suspects add spice to what is basically a well-thought "whodunnit".

In that sense, my favorite episode was the 5th. The nature of the crime folded out elegantly as the investigation progressed and the loose ends got tied, and I do not recall having seen this kind of a plot before in fiction. So, even if there was some influence behind the originality there, at least it was not an overused theme.

Episode 7 was the least credible in terms of the criminal's motivation and method, but still it was okay.

Toiling over storylines and characters can at times be rewarding for the creator like in this series, but there is something else that I find notable with HPI: The colors.

The realm they present is particularly colorful and even shiny at times. Having been to Lille, yes, I can confirm it is a nice city with enough interesting locations around to feed such a series with settings. However, I think Audrey Fleurot being a "red head" also helps the plastics of the show. She is a strangely attractive woman who looks both like a time-trevelled Red Sonja and a grown-up-yet-still-childish Peppermint Patty.

As her bright red hair contributes visually to the frames, her high spirits carry the show well, also thanks to Mehdi Nebbou (Adam Karadec) who is credible as a calm, serious, yet tolerant police detective. The duo is like a gender-switched version of one of my favorite shows ever, Moonlighting.

With the lead character being a single mom of multiple children, I suspect also Candice Renoir might have been among its sources for inspiration, but HPI is definitely much better paced and more rich in texture, both visually and story-wise. The humor is well-balanced, works fine in the Italian translation and dubbing, so I don't see why there would be a notable loss with a potential English edition on that front.

As for the few downsides:

The rapid, patchwork imagery they employ to show us how Morgane's mind works... I find it too fast. She connects certain dots to reach a conclusion that makes sense, and yes, she has various references (something she read on a cereal carton, a documentary she watched, etc.) and using cut out images, clips, this and that in a pop fashion is a good idea, at least better than leaning on verbal narration. But we also need things to sink in. And speeding those particular phases up so much does not help.

Another problem I notice is kind of like an Achille's heel: When you come up with such a concept and feel the need to sharpen it, some very basic things about the title character may not add up. In this case, one can find it difficult to believe a woman as smart and as attractive as Morgane Alvaro could not find a way to reach success and wealth in 21st century France, not till some police chief discovered her abilities could be used to solve crimes. Well, she could at least write a TV show, right?

"Having problems with authority" is mentioned as the excuse to how come she ended up with three kids and low paying jobs, but nowadays whole generations have "problems with authority" and it doesn't stop anyone. The Morgane Alvaro we see could well have established something great for herself, be it in the IT business or entertainment.

Well... This is why we should not dig too deep into stuff that is supposed to be "make believe" by definition.

Overall, HPI has enough potential to go on for many seasons. And I think it deserves worldwide recognition and attention as a worthy, fun, intelligent detective show.