• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, September 16, 2024

The new detective drama “High Potential” coming to ABC this week is a reminder that network TV is alive and well.

This stellar show is the first scripted series of fall, and it starts the new season off on a very positive note.

The show’s title “High Potential” is a classification of a type of personality with a high IQ who possesses “high potential” for a variety of tasks and careers.

But in the case of Morgan Gillory, played by Kaitlin Olson (above photo), her extraordinary intelligence (IQ in the 160s) has been a hindrance -- mainly in the area of employment.

It seems like she gets under employers’ skin with her ultra-keen attention to detail. Gifted with high intelligence for doing things like making complicated calculations in her head, Morgan has a talent for making observations and reaching conclusions that run contrary to everybody else’s. As a result, she cannot hold a job, or at least not one with decent pay.

But in the premiere episode of “High Potential,” Morgan finds an environment in which her talents for observation and calculation come to be appreciated and prized, despite the skepticism of some.

This new place is a unit of LAPD homicide detectives. She falls in with them for the simple reason that she is, or was, employed as the overnight cleaner of their office.

While there, she stumbles upon crime-scene photos from a current investigation and comes almost instantly to conclusions that run contrary to the conclusions already reached erroneously by the detectives. 

Morgan is a downscale, struggling single mom who is Sherlock Holmes with a smidgen of OCD. By the end of the first episode, she has been hired by the homicide unit commander (Judy Reyes) as a consultant. Good-bye, mop and bucket. 

“High Potential” is a great show with a lot of heart. It is an offbeat, oddball scenario that nevertheless is written in such a way that it is made wholly credible, which is no mean feat.

Congratulations all around.

“High Potential” premieres Tuesday, September 17, at 10 p.m. Eastern on ABC.