Showrunner Todd Harthan, Executive producer Sarah Esberg and creator Drew Goddard at the 2024 TCA Summer Press Tour for HIGH POTENTIAL Season 1 | ©2025 ABC/Frank Micelotta

On the freshman series HIGH POTENTIAL, Tuesdays on ABC and thereafter streaming on Hulu, Kaitlin Olson stars as Morgan Gillory. Morgan, a single mother of three, goes from LAPD cleaning woman to police consultant when the detectives realize that her remarkably high IQ and skills at noticing details are helpful in solving cases. Besides wanting to provide for her children, and her compulsion to put things in order, Morgan hopes that her new job can help her find her husband, who has been missing for years.

HIGH POTENTIAL is based on the French TV series HPI – HAUTE POTENTIEL INTELLECTUEL, created by Stephané Carrié & Alice Chegaray-Breaugnot & Nicolas Jean. Drew Goddard, one of HIGH POTENTIAL’s executive producers, adapted the show for ABC.

Another executive producer on HIGH POTENTIAL is showrunner Todd Harthan. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Harthan created the detective series ROSEWOOD, and has been a writer/producer on series including PSYCH, THE RESIDENT, and 9-1-1: LONE STAR.

When ABC holds a Q&A session for HIGH POTENTIAL as part of its presentation at the summer Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour, Harthan participates, then takes time for some follow-up discussion.

Harthan was brought in as showrunner after HIGH POTENTIAL was already underway. How has that experience been for him?

“It’s been exciting and terrifying. I think that was drove it was, look, it’s a first-season show. They’re tricky, right? And this show in particular has a certain tone that we’re going for that is this wonderful balance of drama and comedy. I’ve just come in and tried to embrace a wonderful cast that you can basically write anything to, and find the alchemy between cases that have stakes, and then also find the pockets where we can infuse levity in a natural way. And that’s what I’ve been doing since I started. And, yeah, it’s been challenging. But I’m having the best time.”

Morgan starts out in a job – office cleaning – where almost none of her potential is utilized. Is this often the case for people with her mental gifts? “I guess I’d have to look at people with high IQs, and I don’t know. I’m sure there are studies that have been done, but I’m not sure. I guess I would say that not everybody who has a really high IQ is successful, and not everybody who has a really high IQ isn’t a working-class mother of three. I think it probably is dependent on the individual and their background.”

Harthan says he’s not aware of anything that had to be changed for HIGH POTENTIAL from the French edition due to differing cultural sensibilities. “It isn’t on my radar. I don’t think so. We’re doing our own version, and quite frankly, I’ve only seen a couple of episodes of the French series, because I didn’t want to be heavily influenced with what we were doing here.”

How would Harthan say HIGH POTENTIAL is developing? “I would say it’s becoming more balanced. I think it’s becoming more true to life in tone, because life is funny and absurd and terrifying. In the world of crime, I think that we have to walk that fine line between solving a murder while also infusing it with levity, but I think we have to be careful about when we use comedy and humor within the landscape that we’re telling these stories.”

HIGH POTENTIAL Key Art – Season 1 | ©2025 ABC

Just because HIGH POTENTIAL has police procedural elements, Harthan adds that he doesn’t want people to think “that means that we’re showing a dead body every week. It doesn’t. We’re trying to find a really diverse case list of things that we can do. We have kidnappings, we have attempted murders, all kinds of things that we can do that aren’t just, ‘Oh, we found a body, and let’s go solve the murder,’ because that can be a little monotonous, and frankly, kind of depressing, right? I want bigger wins than that sometimes. I want to not know what you’re going to get every week, what kind of case are you going to get? So, we’re using that flexibility.”

How serialized is HIGH POTENTIAL? Will Morgan’s search for her husband be resolved by the end of Season 1, or will it carry along through the whole series?

“One of the things we talk about a lot is how to balance the case of the week that we’re telling in closing each week with the serialized thread. It is something that I think we really want to seed throughout the series. I think the pace at which we’re telling that story is really important, and probably will spread past Season 1, if I had to guess. But I am guessing, because we’re still mapping it out.

“We creatively love that serialized thread, and we’ll write to it, but we’re trying to figure out the exact pace at which we’re going to tell that story, so it’s an ongoing thing. The truth is, every day in the writers’ room, some new, wonderful idea comes up, and sometimes it takes us in a different direction. And that is certainly one that is sort of under a microscope, because we want to get it right.”

In regard to how Morgan becomes integrated with the police department, Harthan says, “The lovely thing about that is that they’re feeling each other out. Neither trusts the other at first blush. So, I think the pace at which we write to Morgan in particular going, ‘Hey, I’m one of the police and we’re one big happy family,’ considering her character is very guarded and doesn’t trust easily, and the police department is welcoming what was their cleaning lady, I think it would be false storytelling if suddenly they were all just working together and there wasn’t this tiptoeing around those relationships.

“And it’s really fun to write to that. There’s a lot of tension and comedy that comes from them feeling each other out, because it’s wildly unorthodox. So, it’s a slower pace to them welcoming each other with open arms.”

What does Harthan think distinguishes HIGH POTENTIAL from other procedurals?

“I’ve done some procedurals – medical, cop, detective. I think what really separates this one from the pack, and why I really fought hard to come onboard, is there’s a couple secret ingredients. I think that the Morgan character – I just haven’t seen this kind of character take us through an investigative case on TV. I don’t have a comp for it. It sort of reminds me of what I loved so much about HOUSE. I’d never seen a doctor like that before, it was such a tour de force character that you had to watch. I found it really intimidating to come on and write for that [Morgan] character in the best of ways. I think that’s a real secret ingredient.”

Morgan and her children also provide something uncommon for a procedural, Harthan feels. “The family aspect of this show is on a different level. The authenticity and the grounded nature and the intoxicating relationship of Morgan with her children is, you almost forget that you’re watching Kaitlin play this role, and that those aren’t her real kids. I think that continuing to write that and weave that into the fabric of the show is going to make it more than just a case-of-the-week procedural. It’s more sophisticated than that, it’s more elevated than that, and that’s not going to change.”

Follow us on Twitter at ASSIGNMENT X
Like us on Facebook at ASSIGNMENT X

Article Source: Assignment X
Article:HIGH POTENTIAL: Executive producer and showrunner Todd Harthan  on Season 1

Related Posts: