Each episode of crime show High Potential is a self-contained pleasure

High Potential ★★★★
Disney+

A show with a conventional structure but a wonderfully unconventional protagonist, High Potential puts a fun spin on the case-of-the-week murder-mystery. The first time Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson) is seen in the offices of the Los Angeles Police Department’s major crime squad she’s carrying a feather duster – the single-mother-of-three cleans at night. But when she accidentally sees crime scene photos, Morgan instantly spots clues no-one else has. When she alerts the detectives they threaten her with obstruction of justice.

Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson) spots clues in High Potential. Credit: Disney+

It’s not a spoiler to say that Morgan and the cops forge an alliance, and quickly. As an American broadcast television production – every episode is 43 minutes in length, complete with fade-outs for commercial breaks – the series is a model of economy. With a genius-level IQ and advanced cognitive abilities lodged in a brain, much to her chagrin, that never stops asking questions, Morgan’s ability to summarise and short-cut a murder investigation is matched by the narrative’s quick-witted progression and illuminating jibes.

High Potential was created by Drew Goddard (Lost, The Martian), who at first glance has closely translated and trimmed the successful French-Belgian series HPI (Haut Potentiel Intellectuel, or High Intellectual Potential). But the framework he’s left allows for a deft, entertaining mix of alibis and alliances. There are no hints of the class divide that the original show has, but Morgan remains a rebellious, comically contrary figure even as she gets a pay rise (with childcare thrown in) to work as a consultant to the LAPD.

Olson has been a dirtbag delight for two decades now in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but Morgan draws more on her supporting role in Hacks as the underestimated daughter of Jean Smart’s stand-up superstar.

The emotional turns are occasionally a little too abrupt, but for the most part the role is a showcase for Olson, whether she’s crossing boundaries with her initially sceptical partner, detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata), delivering lines with an emphatic physical verve, or figuring out how to raise her eldest daughter, Ava (Amirah J). Sunjata expertly treads a fine line as the exasperated Dr Watson to Morgan’s Sherlock Holmes, slowly coming around despite her unorthodox predilections.

Detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) is the initially sceptical partner of Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson).Credit: Disney/Nicole Weingart

First seen in a cold open, the weekly murders get swift investigations that progress through several suspects and Morgan’s savant-like observations. One great touch: the show makes use of wry insert shots to match her theories and provide visual gags.

Morgan’s background brings an underlying mystery but it unfolds discreetly. The goal is clear: each episode of High Potential is a self-contained pleasure.

The Breakthrough ★★★½
Netflix

This Swedish true-crime drama is a thoughtful riposte to the genre’s excesses. In telling the story behind a seemingly random 2004 double murder in the southern city of Linkoping, it values humanism over gore – you never see the grisly public attacks but you never stop feeling their impact, whether through grieving families or the police officer who refuses to let the case go. This is a procedural about both the case and the pain it brings.

Per Skogkvist (Mattias Nordkvist) and Detective John Sundin (Peter Eggers) collaborate on a case in The Breakthrough.Credit: Netflix

When detective John Sundin (Peter Eggers) first surveys the unfolding situation, he feels confident. There is an eyewitness and DNA data but, despite careful work, his police team can’t find a viable suspect. The dogged detective is a cop-show trope and The Breakthrough leans into it, complete with John drifting away from his pregnant wife Anna (Emelie Falk). But, as is repeatedly the case here, the narrative keeps turning the theme over, looking at it as time passes, and the ramifications grow.

Writer Oskar Soderlund and director Lisa Siwe have divided a complex story into four concise episodes: two in the first months and two many years later, when John turns to an unexpected technology and a prickly expert, Per Skogkvist (Mattias Nordkvist), to resuscitate a dead-ended case. The plotting is concise but the sentiment is nuanced and well-observed. Like Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich, the economical emotions genuinely tie together.

Sammy “The Bull” Gravano is interviewed in feature-length documentary Sons of Ecstasy.Credit:

Sons of Ecstasy
Binge

At the end of the 1990s two small organisations were selling ecstasy amid the burgeoning rave scene in Phoenix, Arizona. There was an obvious rivalry, it got violent, and soon authorities busted and imprisoned the key figures. Why is it a feature-length documentary now? The answer appears to be that one group was led by Gerard Gravano, the son of celebrated New York mob hit man turned informer Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. This is mostly a potted family history, complete with lurid imagery and a lack of moral judgment.

Troian Bellisario plays veteran training officer Traci Harmon in On Call.Credit: Elizabeth Morris / Prime Video

On Call
Amazon Prime

A new police drama about a pair of uniform officers for the Long Beach Police Department, veteran training officer Traci Harmon (Troian Bellisario) and rookie Alex Diaz (Brandon Larracuente), On Call resembles both the successful Southland, which ran for five seasons with its take on patrol-car crises, and the 2012 action-thriller End of Watch. The show is trying to be sharp and immediate, using 30-minute episodes and body camera footage, but it ends up having little to say about the dynamic between the officers or wider policing issues.

A Thousand and One
Paramount+

The American dancer and singer turned actor Teyana Taylor gives a career-making lead performance in this wrenching independent feature about a mother who decides to kidnap her young son from the New York foster system and raise him surreptitiously. Writer and director A. V. Rockwell tells not just the fraught, nuanced story of Inez (Taylor), who at the film’s start in the late 1990s is newly released from jail, and her son Terry, but the wider difficulties gentrification brings to the Harlem neighbourhood as the boy grows up. It’s an artfully made and deeply felt movie.

Studio 54: The Documentary
Stan

If you want some genuine insight, both logistically and emotionally, into the celebrated 1970s New York nightclub whose decadent nights attracted the likes of Andy Warhol, Grace Jones and Bianca Jagger, this impressive 2018 documentary from Matt Tyrnauer (Valentino: The Last Emperor) remains the best option. It captures the fascinating dynamic between co-owners and friends Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the respective extrovert and introvert who cornered clubbing just as disco and celebrity took off. Their rise was meteoric, their fall painful, with Schrager discussing it all for the first time.

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