15/34
American (English) remake of the French series HPI (2021
Chronology
Follows Morgan, a single mother of three, as she uses her exceptional mind to solve a crime while reorganizing evidence during her shift cleaning for the police department. Despite his very high IQ, excellent memory and vast knowledge of the arcane, Morgan makes a series of basic legal mistakes that anyone who has ever watched a legal show on television would know not to make. In the first episode, for example, he obtains from a locked safe in the suspect-victim’s law office a document that would never be admissible in court: illegally obtained evidence. Furthermore, it could not be used to obtain other evidence: violation of the legal doctrine of the “fruit of the poisonous tree”. In episode 2, she is reminded to wear gloves before handling evidence at the crime scene and in episode 2.3, he removes all the documented evidence from the police station, completely breaking the chain of custody and making everything he took no longer admissible in court.
Remake of HPI (2021)
I waited 4 episodes, giving the show plenty of opportunities to prove its worth. This is exactly the same formula that every “detective”, “police” or “legal” show adopts. It’s more along the lines of “light drama” than more realistic shows, but it’s still the same formula. It’s “The Finder”, “Elsbeth”, “So Help Me Todd”, etc… just in a different package. If it’s “based on a French series”, that simply means that the French are perfectly capable of using the same tired and trite formula that the Americans show so profusely, that’s all.
wash, rinse, repeat
Male + female “investigator” team, one is casual and detached, the other serious and by-the-book, they clash but ultimately support each other. The clues are miraculous in nature and often not something that a viewer, any viewer, could possibly understand… and there’s a problem… a mystery series where the audience CANNOT understand the outcome because they are not aware of the miraculous (and hidden) clues that are yet to come but should have been there all along. 2-5 minute opening main story… 30-35 minute random “case” that plays out similarly to every other case… 2-5 minute closing scene of the main story to add a plot twist for next week…
I’m so tired of this overused formula
The premiere of this type of show can be interesting because it’s the setup for the main story… but the pattern of the formula is established in episode 2… and then repeated over and over again throughout the series. The show is often canceled long before the main story reaches a resolution – meaning the missing father in this show NEVER gets any answers or closure because it’s just a “phishing line” of the story to keep viewers hooked for the next week. Olsen and Sunjata do a good job of getting into the characters…
which is hit or miss
some of the other cast members (especially the cops), not so much. And each episode basically has a large guest cast… Overall, it’s a bubblegum detective series… not exactly awful, but not exactly deep or complex in nature. I can see why some might like it, but I’d be surprised if it lasted very long.